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People obsessed with niche subjects and go all out on that are the backbone of society.

My mind goes to the guy that packaged 1/3 of all Arch packages in the official repo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqMf6XFacR8&pp=ygUKZGlzdHJvd...



Hell, just this youtuber is a good example of what you are saying. This guy, 'DistroTube', has a ton of entry level videos about seemingly niche linux topics. Even the video you posted has a little command line tutorial embedded into it.

I come across him whenever I am trying to figure out what a specific distro or tool _looks and feels_ like. If you search any distro name plus "distrotube" there is probably a video of him setting it up and playing around with it.

I have wondered about this guys background before and finally looked it up tonight.

> Despite the geekiness of my content, I have never actually worked in IT or a computer-related industry. Although Linux and technology have always been my hobby, I worked in the retail industry until recently. In 2020, with the pandemic and the subsequent shutdown, I lost the job that I had at the time. The retailer that I worked for went bankrupt and cut most of their supervisory positions (including mine). Thankfully, I already had a side job of sorts—making YouTube videos! So since the pandemic started, my full-time job has been making video content.

> I have been strictly a Linux user since 2008. The distro that I currently run is ArcoLinux with the xmonad window manager. Some of the software that I use daily includes GIMP (for graphics), Kdenlive (video editing), Audacity (audio editing), and OBS (for recording/streaming video). I also use a distribution of Emacs called Doom Emacs. It is my preferred text editor, although I often use Vim as well, especially if I am already in a terminal.

from https://people.zsa.io/derek-taylor/

Which still leaves a lot of mystery to the "how did he get into this" question.


Here's another one, apparently the author and maintainer of helm.el is a French mountain guide with no IT history.

https://sachachua.com/blog/2018/09/interview-with-thierry-vo...


I came across a fairly detailed guide to travelling in outback Australia the other day. The site owner/author was an older woman in Germany or similar.


Can you share the link?


https://www.ritas-outback-guide.com/

"Well, my name is Rita Amend. I live in the crowded Rhine-Main-area in Germany. Perhaps that's why I love the tranquillity of the Outback so much."

"Update: Now I am retired, Australia and the vast inland is still in my dreams. At the end of 2018 we spent our 9th holiday in Australia."

Now that I think about it, I can identify. I'm from Australia but have visited Southern Utah many times, think about it often and could write an extensive site about it.


Thanks!


That's amazing. As someone with a non-linear journey into tech, love hearing about people like this. Insane that he's been able to write Linux related YouTube content despite never working in industry.


I wonder how much imposter syndrome one would have to go through to finally feel comfortable after releasing so many videos, with the potential scrutiny of more academic/formal Linux communities.


I'll add this guy, who is building a 1:60 model 777 out of paper, with unfathomable levels of detail: https://www.lucaiaconistewart.com/model-777


That is incredible


Another cool one is this guy's crazy-detailed explanation of mechanical watch mechanisms with interactive diagrams using hand-written WebGL: https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/

(Previously discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31261533)


This blog post prompted a deep dive into mechanical watch repair, further online courses and endless reading. I’m now an amateur watchmaker and spend my nights tinkering with and trying to restore vintage mechanical watches. I’ve never been nerd sniped this hard, but I love it. Fantastic hobby (albeit ridiculously expensive)


Yes. Mandatory nerd snip warning for any of Bartosz Ciechanowski's blog posts!


Oh boy. They’ve made many more interactive explainers. Very impressive.

https://ciechanow.ski/archives/


Related to this thread, generally, is Simon Baron Cohen’s The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention https://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Seekers-Autism-Drives-Inventi...


We all have weird interest, it's the long tail.

Magic happens when you find someone with the same weird interest: emulation brings innovation through iterations!

Maybe someday I'll find someone interested in running Excel through wine rendering in Sixels within a terminal :)

And before you ask, yes I've enjoyed way too much reading about https://github.com/taviso/123elf and the history behind it!


This is an interesting observation because when I thought about it, I realized that it has basically been the antidote to social media burnout for me.

Most social media (IG, Twitter etc.) - a find to be a total shitshow and I subscribe to the idea that they cause depression, anxiety and tend to make your life worse.

What can be good though is a small and well moderated community that's focused on a particular interest which everyone in it shares. These can be really rewarding to participate in.

In a somewhat different way, the phenomenon also manifests in the shift from public social media to private online e.g. Telegram chat groups - those don't seem to be as soul-sucking as IG or Twitter, either.


I've tried to make 123 work on Linux but it crashes. Maybe because I'm on amd64.



That is absolutely true. I remember a while back an emulator developer that made the PS2 emulator for mobile phones got bullied out of developing it anymore, so once that stops working then we won't get to play PS2 games on phones anymore which, while not the worst thing ever, definitely sucks


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higan_(emulator)#Author

We just recently lost Near, a brilliant person who probably had one of the best understandings of the SNES out there, and built multiple import SNES emulators because they were bullied into suicide for being non-binary.


Lol conda feedstocks


Linked in the comments is a video interviewing the man, Felix Yan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUDX6amkHOg

It's in mandarin but CC translate works.




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