/~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~\ Title: I'm losing my love of tech... Date: March 31, 2025 (Edited late March 31, 2025) |~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~| Okay, so that date above is a slight lie. I'm starting to write this on the 30th, but meh... Thing is, after a lot of bullshit going on in the tech world, I'm starting to lose my love for it. That is, anything involving "modern" tech has lost my interest. I still love my older OSes and machines, but the non-stop fighting and smug asshatery from the FOSS world, the AI witch hunts, the ruins brought by AI scrapers... I'm sick of it. It's honestly no wonder so many devs have turned to farming and the like, given how much burnout and trauma they've likely had to face. Not just from the flamewars and asshole users, but from the management hell of various distros, other devs who give a "my way or no way" attitude, and just... The whole thing has kinda started going to shit. AI-loving "bounty seekers" haven't helped much in that area, nor have the attention seeking parts of the security industry. It's part of why I've started looking toward smaller communities, like the permacomputing[0] efforts, uxn[1], the classic and retro computing communities, and...well, I've been transitioning away from tech as a focus myself. Green living and design has taken more of a front seat for me when it comes to my hobbies, especially for tiny housing, vanlife/urban camping, off-grid life, and DIY. In fact, after nuking almost /all/ of the tech-oriented channels from my YouTube subscriptions and RSS feeds, I've been focusing on things like DIY and low-tech channels, vanlife and urban camping vlogs, off-grid life vlogs, tiny home and alternative housing documentary channels, and...artist and author vlog channels. There's a *little* overlap in some areas, like Protesilaos Stavrou[2] who talks about Emacs while also vlogging about his off-grid lifestyle, but most of it has been without much in the way of tech. I might add channels about gopher, gemini, smolnet, and smolweb stuff to my RSS feeds, but I'd rather see those topics get mixed into talk about topics of permacomputing, green living, and so on. Hell, /maybe/ I'll talk about some of that stuff myself at some point. Not sure yet, though I wouldn't mind doing a bit of vtuber vlogging or talks on YT and maybe Peertube. But again, "tech" wouldn't be the star of those talks, but rather how it's integrated into other aspects, like using a lower-powered device with a solar system, or setting up ad-hoc wireless networks instead of relying on the Internet, or repurposing a damaged device instead of just chucking it out as ewaste. If I had the needed equipment to do it, I'd love to build my own battery wall and recell my laptop batteries myself, since I /can/ do that with the devices I have. Of course, there might be some that are tech-oriented. Things like NNCP[3], gopher, gemini, BBSes, and just basics of things like email and NNTP would be topics I could cover for people who want that off-grid mentality of not relying on being online 24/7. `offpunk`[4] is something I plan on getting working once I can get a stable Linux install on my laptop again[^0][^1], and became a bit of an inspiration for me a few times over. So did the Hundred Rabbits[5] duo of Rekka and Devine, their trips across the ocean in their boat, and the creation of `uxn`, which I'd love to cover at some point. Yeah, writing this down has helped me work a lot of things out. I might keep this exclusive to my own gopher server, just to keep myself sane. Not sure yet. Maybe I'll sleep on it, or start writing out ideas to get them out of my head and into something I can see for myself. I've got plenty of time to think. |~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~| So, I pulled this post off of my phlog for good reason: I want to clarify some things, but I don't want it up while I figure out my words. Particularly, I wanna clarify this part in the first paragraph: > ...but the non-stop fighting and smug asshatery from the FOSS world... See, I don't hate FOSS. Linux was the first OS I actually fell in love with, but not the first I used. I used MS-DOS and Windows 98/ME before it, before trying out /Mandrake Linux/ somewhere around late 2001 and early 2002. What killed my use of it was the constant in-fighting and flamewars I ended up being pulled into at random, and the fighting over every little aspect of the OS that so many people try to force onto others. It put me in such a bad place mentally that **Mac OS X** was what healed my love of tech at the time. Yes, I went from Linux to MacOS back in 2012. I started with Mountain Lion (10.8.x), and I loved it because everything was so much simpler. It completely countered all of the hate and attacks I heard about it from the Linux community while I was part of it, and that enraged me even more. They always talked about the "Reality Distortion Field" and how Apple was basically mind-controlling the users, but the truth was that Linux had (and still has) a similar problem: its own users want to control others not only in what they use, but how they use it. They just went about it through peer pressure, mockery, and personal attacks. It wasn't until recently (about 2019) that I really started to encounter the /sane/ part of FOSS again. I found people on YouTube like Veronica of "Veronica Explains"[6], Bread of "Bread on Penguins"[7], Michael Horn[8], and Kelvin Shadewing[9]. I found small communities of people who didn't just blast others for using something else. I found people who were actually /pleasant/ to be around and talk with, instead of hearing about little outside of FOSS activism, politics, and how much "the other side" sucked[^2]. Of course, I still see that toxicity, especially among people who insist that social media is the /one true solution/, and on various issue trackers where I feel for the devs having to deal with it. But I've been blocking out enough that I'm starting to see /less/ of it. I won't pretend to be part of the larger Linux community anymore, but I've found people I can actually enjoy talking with, and that's enough for me on that front. But getting support on Linux? HAH! I've had enough experiences to traumatize me for years to come trying to get help, and sometimes by proxy as the person helping others with their own Linux problems. Just recently, I assisted someone in dealwith with /Timeshift/ filling up their root drive (they didn't even know what it was before then), and the absolute joy when we got Ubuntu booting again was...cathartic. It showed that /actually/ helping people was **far** more of a boon for Linux adoption than dunking on them for mistakes or what applications they used on their personal machine. This person became *more* willing to keep going with the OS because of that assistance, and that felt good to see. That's also what got me to give Debian another shot on my Latitude E6430, and to try and move back over. Not the idea of my MacBook breaking, or any of the "advancements" in Linux. Sure as hell not /influencers/ on YouTube and such. Being able to make a difference and bring happiness to others in this miserable world was encouragement enough to make another attempt. That should say many things about my feelings on the subject. And I think I've rambled on more than an indigo raccoon at this point, so I shall end off and re-upload this now. \~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~/ [0]: https://permacomputing.net/ [1]: https://100r.co/site/uxn.html [2]: https://www.youtube.com/@protesilaos [3]: https://nncp.mirrors.quux.org/ [4]: https://offpunk.net/ [5]: https://100r.co/site/home.html [6]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMiyV_Ib77XLpzHPQH_q0qQ [7]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwHwDuNd9lCdA7chyyquDXw [8]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1s1OsWNYDFgbROPV-q5arg [9]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ2yxS_SfAYyWSgn2XHQQTw |~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~| [^0]: I've been getting help with making a gameplan about that, because as much as I love my MacBook, I still want a bit of futureproofing on that front. [^1]: Funny enough, while writing this I actually started working on getting it going. Here's hoping another failed GRUB update doesn't hose the poor machine again. And no, still not using a Wayland compositor. [^2]: In this case, "the other side" meant non-Linux/FOSS users, /and/ in some cases, people using distros other than Arch. I swear that community is more of a liability to Linux adoption than even the FSF sometimes.