Hmm not sure whether my cutter directly accepts SVG, I have to check … in fact I’m using Inkscape to assemble everything and then just use the application to generate gcode … not sure whether I can skip that step because the SVG doesn’t contain any info regarding cutting speed, laser power etc …

vapoursynth

Oh I’ve never heard about that one …

The problem with Davinci I encountered was that very common encodings like x264 or x265 don’t work with the community edition and I can’t justify getting the pro version from an economic standpoint …

Supposedly a solution for Blender exists but I tried to make it work and failed :( https://www.cadsketcher.com/

If you don’t mind using text-based interaction you could give OpenSCAD a try … it’s like TinkerCAD (solids and holes) but with code …

I might be biased here because I’m a programmer by trade but I didn’t find it too hard … also mostly need boxy shapes … but still, I think it’s neat …

My personal top 3:

Video Editing - Kdenlive isn’t bad in and by itself but it seems really slow to work with, and getting any kind of smooth preview seems impossible even with proxy clips … the other day I bought a GoPro 3D camera, and I can cut, preview, rotate, reframe and encode with their Android app on my potato phone from 2021, and it feels snappy (I was surprised, really). Yet on my i7 laptop with Kdenlive, much simpler tasks feel much more sluggish on average …

CAD - I use OpenSCAD for 3D modeling and I love it, but sometimes a GUI-Based CAD program would be nice. I’m sure FreeCAD is powerful but the UI/UX aspect makes it hard to unlock that power. I’m a bit conflicted about it because I really don’t want to play down the efforts of the FreeCAD dev team, and it seems like everyone and their mothers talk badly about their UI/UX. But on the other hand I tried a couple times and got really frustrated, and I’m usually not one to shy away from steeper learning curves. Supposedly you can do CAD in Blender but I never really figured that out.

Laser cutting - While most slicers for 3D printers work on Linux, Lasercutting seems a different story. You can still use older versions of Lightburn but it’s not FLOSS and it seems strange to pay for a license if the support for your OS has been discontinued 2 versions ago (or one, not sure right now). I want to give Rayforge (https://rayforge.org/) a try soon but until then it’s LaserGRBL or the program that came with my laser cutter on a virtual machine.

Honorable mention: A linux phone would be nice.

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 …

I gladly accept the fossil label, but there’s no contrarian sentiment behind it … I just never felt any pain staying with X11.

Also, the window manager I use is developed by a friend who lives 10min away and texts me every time he has an update, and I love it … doesn’t work on Wayland, though …

Dunno, as a German, I’d find it ahistorical if everybody was using “Deutschland” … the nation-state as an idea, and a unified nation state, are relatively young. Before that, what we call Deutschland today was a mess. It’s no surprise that romance languages use some or another variation of “Allemagne” … the german dialect spoken around the southwestern border is still called “Allemannisch” even in Germany, same with “Saxon” and the variations “Saksa” to the east …

I kinda prefer it the way it is in this case, honestly …

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.