They don't have to though ... mine looks moderately fancy but is really just a collection of used or discounted parts I scraped together over the last 20 years ... I have two jerseys, both bought when they were on sale, one is probably 15 years old ...
New shorts every once in a while because they wear out, the cheap ones work fine for me ...
So I still look like a MAMIL but in reality it's a fairly low-budget hobby ...
I guess I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, I wouldn't by it again (or anything from the company), but at the time (just before the company went completely haywire) the A1 was the right machine ("just works" with decent print quality) at the right price (on sale + discount) that got me into 3D printing ... so, I "fell" for the YT marketing for sure, but I don't regret it one second ... now that I know that it's a both use- and joyful technology for me I would gladly pay for a Prusa but at the time I wouldn't have ... and I would have missed out for sure ... learned 3D modeling, manufacturing, design, skills that I wouldn't want to miss.
I guess after well over 1000h of printing I don't have to expect it to go up in flames, either ...
For completeness I should also say that I never updated the firmware and transfer data using the SD card exclusively, it's not connected to any network ... but that was my expectation to begin with, I didn't know much about 3D printing before and I thought that's how they work anyway.
Switched to being a full-time Linux user around 2005, still love it ...
Used AwesomeWM for a long time but a few years ago I switched to an even more minimalist WM a friend of mine is developing ... still love it despite some bugs ...
Tried a variety of IDEs but always ended up with Emacs ...
And, last but not least, I've been developing my own software for music composition and performance for more than 10 years now, and use it every day ... can't say it's the same because it always changes, but I use it practically every day :)
Permanently Deleted
"he" in this case could just as well be a trust-fund college bro ... no mention of class at all ...
jumping to the conclusion that awful behavior correlates with lower socioeconomic class ... that's kinda ... classist?
I doesn't "need" to be imported, the question is just, where do we see the future of federated (non-)platforms ? Do we want them to be "small and cozy" with a small and fairly narrow selection of content or do we want a non-corporate alternative that can compete in richness and variety of interesting content of all niches?
A lot of folks only seem to see the crappy part of youtube and other platforms, and don't see the richness of content that exists ther. There's still so much interesting stuff to be found. I don't think there has ever been a bigger archive of, say, documentation about arts, crafts, history, food, than YT, even it its current enshittified form. If that's an ocean of content, the Fediverse isn't even a major river (at least that's my impression).
If you don't mind that, great. But I do, I'd love a non-corporate version to exist that can compete in terms of richness of content.
And monetary incentive is part of the puzzle, as it incentivizes people to spend time on it, which in terms generates a bigger audience, which in turn has a higher potential to support a wider range of content niches. Plain and simple.
I don't agree, really ... that'd limit the Fediverse to hobbyists.
It's completely legitimate to look for income & exposure as a creator, whether you're making music, visual art, or document your process making physical objects. Corporate platforms, as crappy as they might be, provide a path to that, and in many ways created viable path for creators to do what they like full-time. Not saying that it's perfect or easy. But the Fediverse is currently no alternative at all ...
Currently, restricting yourself to the Fediverse as an artist unfortunately means that you're taking quite a hit in terms of exposure you can get. As long as that's the case, and people even defend it, then we really can't complain that the Fediverse isn't attractive for a larger amount of people, and centralized platforms will always have the bigger draw.
I try to avoid corporate platforms as much as I can, but as a consumer I often feel starved of content. I haven't found any interesting woodworking channels on PeerTube, or guitar repair channels, or whatever else I enjoy watching to wind down.
And as a creator, well ... it's not my source of income, but I sure would like it to be. And if I ever decide to make that step, I'm pretty sure that I's have to make amends to my "no corporate platforms" approach. The Fediverse doesn't feed you.
Same situation, more or less ... but I honestly don't remember anyone meeting their grim fate the way you described ... you'd see people with a cast here and there (I got mine in gym class, of all locations), but I think all kids in my extended social groups made it to adulthood without major, life-altering physical damage ...
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 ...
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.
(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?
Pixelfed - I'm Confused About Some Details ...
I mean ... it's mostly functional but in times when I'm in decent shape (which fluctuates) in a way I like the look of a well-fitted jersey 🫣 😅 ... bibs and helmets always look kinda awkward though ...