The contrast to this is knowing how to use the tool well and the difference between a $50 and $500 tool. Sometimes the cheapest version of a tool wielded badly is a lot more expensive than a pro with the high end version. Not to mention filling up a garage with things used only once years ago!

Besides the usual hammer, power drill, basic hand tools, duct tape, etc, what are a few tools or items everyone should consider having around the house?

My take on this is not that this is the default early adopter demographic (bereal, TikTok, etc…cmon old dudes don’t act like we are “leading the charge”). But, there’s a good chunk of older tech oriented folks that see a glimmer of hope in the fediverse bringing back some bits of the “old web” imo.

While most of the people like me don’t love meta or Twitter it was kinda good enough, but Reddit was kind of a last straw. I was there when all these companies were born and at the time we were all teen and 20-something early adopters (believe it or not even Facebook used to be cool!) and we’ve watched them all slowly degrade. Very young folks prob don’t care as they don’t really use any of these services, but us old nerds want to avoid the pitfalls of the Web 2.0 era.

Web3 and the crypto-decentralization efforts were really ham fisted…I think most experienced techies saw through all the BS and recognized how wildly inefficient it all was, not to mention outright scammy in many cases. Fediverse is unproven but I think it has potential, and I think many of us older techies feel that way.

How much do you know about the inner workings of an internal combustion engine, yet do you still drive?

It’s a good thing imo that we’ve abstracted away the complexity of tech to make it more usable. It was a pain in the ass before (so says one of the “old” techies on lemmy haha)

I had a minor debate here re: Usenet, where OP said we basically had an “easy to use” internet 30+ years ago, and AOL won by blanketing people with CDs.

I’m a techie who first got online with a 2400baud modem and I am fully aware that nothing I do can be extrapolated to the general population. Now that I work in the field, designing for “normies” is how and why services grow. The winners are the most usable services, not the most ideologically righteous ones.

(Also normies is a ridiculous elitist term, users of lemmy and mastodon are not special or smart…in this moment in time we’re primarily idealists with strong opinions on centralized tech that most people couldn’t care less about lol)