What have I become?!?

[elena@aseachange.com]

What have I become?!? My mom just asked me if we're free at the end of May (weekend of 23rd-24th) because she'd like to visit* us in Paris... and my FIRST thought was: wait maybe that weekend there will be #JDLL in Lyon?

Now the highlights of the calendar year for me are #FOSS conferences. Truly.

I was pleased to tell my mom that no, JDLL is the following weekend, so we are indeed free.

(*In my defense, we visit my parents in Italy every month-two months, and we do video calls every day, so it's not as if a FOSS conference took precedence. I'm a bona fide Italian daughter after all)

Anyway looking forward to my parents' visit... and ALL the FOSS conferences I can attend this year 😅​

#MySoCalledSudoLife

[whitehotaru@masto.ai]

@elena the addictiveness of open source. 😆 Parents! Protect your children, or all your devices will run on Linux shortly!

[elena@aseachange.com]

@whitehotaru speaking of, I can't wait for my little one to be a bit older so we can do projects with Raspberry Pis 😆​

[elena@aseachange.com]

Speaking of #JDLL, some of you may remember that I had the honor of speaking at the 2025 edition, invited by the awesome @yunohost team to share my experiences self-hosting with them.

I asked my husband to tag along and bring our daughter so she could see me speaking on stage... and see that mamma does cool stuff outside the house too.

Well, my daughter brought up Lyon and the conference on the way to school the other morning. I asked her: "did you have a good time?" and her immediate response was: "I didn't understand anything you said!"

Me: "Well, it's normal, I talked about grown up stuff."

Child (4 then, 5 soon): "But what did you say?"

And then I proceeded to try to explain the concept of #selfhosting and #digitalsovereignty and how empowering it is to use a tech stack independent of #BigTech platforms... in an accessible way that she would understand.

It was SO DIFFICULT.

I probably failed spectacularly and she still doesn't understand. But it made me think that it'd be worth trying to explain this to older kids... like pre-adolescents or in their early teens? Maybe a project for another time.

Edit/add-on: my daughter asked me to speak about the Pink Panther or Bluey next time so she could understand 😂

#MySoCalledSudoLife #resist #parenting

[titus@gts.pijean.ovh]

@elena @yunohost In my humble opinion, not being an educator, I think these matters should be covered in the French collèges during the Technology lessons (so, when kids are between 12 and 14).

It's right about the time they now usually get a smartphone (if it's not already done), and would be great to reflect with them about what's personal data, which entities can collect and process it, where can it be stored... leading to how the Internet is built now, how many services are centralized, and how we trust the service providers and companies with our digital lives.

... and that alternatives exist. 😇

[olasd@mastodon.opportunis.me]

@elena your post makes me immediately think of the "Mommy, why is there a server in the house?" book https://ia601600.us.archive.org/13/items/mommybook/mommybook.pdf

I'm still not sure what Microslop were trying to achieve there, the contents are corny and, ugh, sexist, but maybe the concept has some merit

[elena@aseachange.com]

@olasd OMG! what an interesting read.

Eye-rolls at the sexist stuff but a few smiles too! (I dream of setting up a NAS for Jellyfin)... but yes I saw some merit... until the biggest eyeroll at the end for "a Windows Home Server!" 😆​

Thank you so much for sharing this Nicolas, a lot of food for thought and maybe creating something (less sexist, more FOSS) in the future. It would be such a cool project for me 😊​

[titus@gts.pijean.ovh]

@elena @yunohost There's actually the B2I (Brevet Informatique et Internet) that's mandatory to obtain the Brevet to graduate from collège, maybe the matter is evoked in its program.

[elena@aseachange.com]

@titus ooooh this is really interesting stuff, thank you! I should look into it... I was going to prepare a presentation for high schools but it's so important to get even younger people aware of all this

[dch@bsd.network]

@elena I bet she is super proud of you!

I have tried to explain what I do to my kids and my best received explanation was „I build LEGOs all day but there aren’t actually any LEGOs it’s all in my mind“. And sometimes just Internet Plumber.

@yunohost

[nathan@ublog.hurel.me]

@yunohost@toot.aquilenet.fr @elena@aseachange.com On my side I initiate my 12yo to sharkey and peertube and we use signal in the family. No surveillance platform on teenagers mobile 🙎

[louis@social.ikacode.com]

@elena @whitehotaru my 7 and 10 years old daughters have their own laptop (under parental supervision) running on Linux, with Libre Office, Delta Chat, Gcompris, Freetube and other OpenSource apps, so that they get to know these tools before school forces them to use Windows, Microsoft Office and Google... Later on we'll probably set up our own home server together 😎

[elena@aseachange.com]

@dch haha the LEGO analogy could work! (since we play every single day for hours). thanks! ☺️​

@yunohost

[elena@aseachange.com]

@nathan @yunohost GOALS!!! 🙌​🏆​❤️​

[elena@aseachange.com]

@louis @whitehotaru fantastic!

yesterday my 4-year-old spotted a Mastodon sticker on my laptop (a brand new one) and said she'd like a computer one day... so she could put cool stickers on the lid 😂​

I will keep all my old Macbooks around so that I could install Linux on one when the time comes... I mean she's still illiterate 😅​

[louis@social.ikacode.com]

@elena yeah mine love stickers too, and I give them some goodies like key-rings and such that I get on some events, they love it :)
I only set up this computer 1 or 2 years ago for them, using an old DELL laptop, so that my older one could prepare her school presentations and reports. So yeah 4 years old might be a bit too early ^^

[elena@aseachange.com]

@louis I can't stop thinking about your previous toot... and imagining my little one at school in the future, being force-fed the use of Big Tech tools. This is definitely motivation enough to go full steam ahead for me, advocating for FOSS and creating resources for parents and educators.... so thank you for making me think of this. I know it's a David vs. Goliath kind of battle, but worth the fight

[wdeborger@toot.community]

@elena I love explaining stuff to small children!

If I would have to explain (some aspect) of digital sovereignty to a 4 year old. I would do it as follows: in your class, you have toys. Which is nice, so you can play. But in some schools, there are also toys that are shared over all classrooms. Is this the case in your school? Imagine that you your class has shared all its toys. But now the other classes have decided you can't play with them anymore. That would be no fun and not fair.

[joel@gts.tumfatig.net]

@dch @elena a friend of mine, who happened to be a layer, understood and named my/this job "gomettologue" (from the french word "gomette"). Which could basically be translated into color stickers arranger 🤣

@yunohost

[paradegrotesque@mastodon.sdf.org]

@joel @dch @elena @yunohost

My kids, when they were younger, thought my work had something to do with spiky fishes, given the amount of #OpenBSD swag I keep around.

So I was the computer guy who worked with spiky fishes. Explain that to your teacher when you are 6 or 7...