There’s a few technical and non technical reasons someone might be on Bluesky/AT instead of Activity Pub. Protocol specific there’s:

) Account ownership (theoretically at least, migration is still in development). Though it’s hidden behind domain based identification there’s a cryptographic key that let’s you migrate to another PDS even if yours is down or banned you.

) Performance. Hosting something like a PDS is lighter than an Activity Pub instance.

) User level configuration. Bluesky let’s you set custom moderation lists and algorithms, something you can’t on Activity Pub.

) Compatibility. Building something like a link aggregator on AT that is compatible with a microblogging platform like Bluesky is likely a lot easier then Activity Pub since AT is broken up into PDSs and Relays. (To be fair compatibility does work on Activity Pub, but it’s got jank).

There’s also some less technical reasons as well:

) Bluesky is a platform and you don’t need to learn a protocol to use it. Yeah it’s not that hard to learn how any of the big three protocols work, but it’s also not that hard to change your car’s oil or sew ripped cloths instead of replacing them - but how many people do those? I’d guess 80% of Lemmy is an IT guy between 20-45 so it can get a little echo chambery on how easy tech is. One if the reasons Threads makes up 99.5%+ of the fediverse.

) Defederatiation is becoming a mess. If some random Joe has a friend on Bluesky & Nostr (both bridged), a few on threads, and a few spread across different instances; yet he can’t reach all but 1 or 2 of them from the instance he chose to join on joinmastodon it might be time to reconsider how things are done. Techy people might have no problem sifting through a long list of servers to find the right one, but somebody who’s already on the fence is probably going to quit at that point.

) Bluesky has a more mainstream culture, while the fediverse has very specific thoughts and ideas. Had I said I was on Windows you all might have put a hit out on me 😆

Cool

I tested/wrote about it recently, you’re welcome to copy my metaphorical homework if you want

Friendica Side

(I’m getting an Nginx error trying to load Nerdica, hopefully it’ll be back up soon)

Lemmy Side

Cross Compatibility portion of blog post

The long in the short of it is that Lemmy can communicate with Mastodon & Friends, though since Activity Pub servers handle everything and microblogging platforms have no clue what Lemmy is doing there’s a bit of jank.

You can post to a community by "@"ing it, although it can only be a text based submission. You can follow a community by following it’s name (say @fediverse@lemmy.ml) and you’ll get submissions in the form of boosts/reposts. You can also grab a link to a post or reply and search for that on a microblogging server to reply to or like.

My test went pretty well, although the post I made was slightly wonky (title and “@” appeared in the post text). I also didn’t see all the Lemmy replies make it back to my home server. If nomadic identities make their way to activity pub most of the jank could be resolved.

As for a testimonial about compatibility something that sticks out is cross compatibility between Activity Pub, Nostr, and AT (BlueSky). I’m usually on Nostr, but I follow Activity Pub and AT accounts; and thanks to a copying of a json file you can search out the same username on Activity Pub or Nostr and find my Nostr account.

I’m far from an expert, but anything on standards JIS X6257 / ISO 18630 would probably be a good start. It’s an open standard for 100+ year discs.

Otherwise probably best to look into accelerated aging studies. For technology that’s less that 100 yrs old to claim 100 or 1000 is a bit uncertain but accelerated aging is probably the closest to a best guess. I recall skimming over a third party lab saying Verbatim gold foil archival DVDs were estimated to last 30-120 years depending on storage methods and luck, but never saved the link.

Oh yeah, stick it in the sun or a damp box and either will probably be bad in weeks instead of decades or centuries. But supposedly they’ll meet those lifespans good at room temp

Kinda funny, I was just writing about archival media this morning. Verbatim makes DVDs & Blue Rays that last ~100 years, and M-DISC makes ones that’ll last ~1000 years. And the Verbatim Blu Rays run ~$0.036 per gig.

The account ownership one is definitely my first thought too. Using keypairs to identify accounts controlled by the user would be great. You can hide it behind a normal looking username with your (or a third party’s) domain on both Nostr and AT (though AT’s not fully developed, but it’s totally in control of the user and doing that with activity pub could hand the metaphorical keys of your account to you instead of the server. Another way would be to allow users to use their own domain with an existing third party server, or use something similar to Zot’s (Hubzilla) “Nomadic Identities” that let you mirror your account on another server.

Implementing quote posts is a little above my pay grade, but I actually think that the link option might be a great idea. Nostr does quote posts by just embedding the post into your post where the nevent is pasted in, making both regular quote posts and the general ability to embed any post anywhere in your post. That sort of functionality, just using links to posts instead of nevents could be neat to standardize into activity pub as well, especially if all the other activity pub software already is doing that. Though again, not exactly a dev, so who knows if that’d break things.

I assume Lemmy and Mastodon are the same way in that they won’t search outside their databases when logged out? If so that’d explain why. Thanks!

Actually one already exists at https://mostr.pub. A dual Activity Pub/Nostr server called ditto is also in the works.

Decentralized encrypted email.

Create a key, identify it by a hash of it, and encrypt all mail sent to the account with the key. Allow it to run on top of regular email using one or more email addresses as an alias, but have the key itself be the identifier.

Client 1 creates a key pair > uploads email address(es)/"aliases " that client controlls (signed with key pair) > client 2 searches for emails based on client 1’s key or aliases > client 2 sends email through one or more of the accepted inboxes encrypted with public key > client 1 reads encrypted email.

Basically a modernized version of PGP that also handles identification, and similar to how it’s been proposed to change Matrix accounts to in order to make them decentralized.

The tablet and 2 in 1 surface devices are pretty much laptops (at least same architecture and bootloader) amd they’ve been easy to boot other stuff with in my somewhat limited experience.

A month or so ago I picked up an 8gb model and it’s been really nice, I wrote a blog post about it if you’re interested and have been really happy with it. 4gb is enough for note taking & code writing, web browsing, reading, and YouTube watching (at low/mid resolutions) and I actually got away with those on a 2gb RAM 16gb storage Chromebook + Debian for a while. Still though, if you can spring for 8gb of ram that will be helpful, and a necessity if you want to do things like run waydroid.

Gnome works great, just be sure to set up the on screen keyboard and run the custom hot corners plugin to make it work everywhere. Also, I know that chromium doesn’t have the best reputation in these parts, but you’ll probably need to use either a WebKit or chromium browser for their touch controls and PWAs.

I went with Debian, but I can’t imagine Fedora offering a much different experience. Mine worked fine without a surface specific kernel, but results may vary from device to device.

Last, I bought mine used for $99 US on EBay. Not sure how it varies from country to country but at least in the states you can find older surface models in decent condition starting at $70 US or $100 US for ones in like new condition with a keyboard & charger.

Edit: beyond Surfaces, if you’re deal hunting and don’t mind more research I believe most 2 in 1s running Windows or ChromeOS will accept a custom OS.

I’m on the standard LTS kernel (if I properly remember Debian defaults). I did check out the Linux Surface project before setting it up, though the standard kernal and Gnome config seems to work great out of the box. Even little things like the gyroscope and automatic brightness worked from the start, though it probably varies from model to model.

Edit: only thing that didn’t work out of the box is the camera. Going to tinker around with that at some point, not a super high priority personally but still nice to have.

I recently picked up an older MS Surface model and it has been really good. I don’t know where tablet bleeds into 2in1, but it’s a tablet that has a magnetic keyboard that pops on and off and accepts USB connections for stuff like mice with a USB to USB-C adapter or via a surface dock. Prices start at around $70 on ebay for older models in decent condition and run up to around $2k for the highest end models directly from Microsoft. Being x86 they accept any compatible OS (including Linux) and installs just as easy as any laptop (minus the later models that need the touch driver installed manually on Linux or a Windows re-install). If you go with a surface and buy an older model make sure you get 8gb of ram instead of 4.

As far as setup goes, I went with Gnome, enabled the on screen keyboard, then added the “custom hot corners” Gnome plugin to get a working on screen keyboard everywhere (without the plugin it only works in Gnome and Gnome apps). Afterwards (since I went with an older model that didn’t need the touch drivers) it’s fully ready for use like any other device.

There’s also the PineTab2, though from the sounds of it it’s not really ready to be used as a tool, more so just for development and experimentation. I did find two good blog posts about it’s state when researchign devices which would be worth reading if you were considering buying a PineTab2 and wanted to know what to expect:

https://ivonblog.com/en-us/posts/pine64-pinetab2-review/

https://ivonblog.com/en-us/posts/after-3-months-of-daily-driving-pinetab-2/

Privacy or security hardening?

If you’re just using Windows for gaming, and you’re only on game markets like Steam and maybe video/audio streaming services while gaming then you’re probably pretty secure. As far as if you’re just installing games, then there’s not really too many inroads for malware outside of a market like Steam or the particular game company getting compromised, which would have issues regardless of which OS you’re using them on. Windows 10 already has anti-virus built in and UAC so you’re probably just about there already. I say this as a die hard Linux advocate: the idea that Windows is wildly insecure when compared to Linux/Mac/BSDs is incorrect as far as I know and is just a myth from back when nobody cared about writing malware for anything other than Windows.

If you’re also web browsing, I’d say having a well configured browser would be good to do, and making sure you are regularly updating/auto updating Windows and other software. Also, if you play a lot of online games and end up opening up port forwarding or something similar just be conscious of it and make sure to do something like that right and limit what kind of attack surface you’re opening up.

If you’re thinking privacy, I did just do a blog post about Win 11 which is similar, but I have a feeling if you’re on Lemmy you’re already familiar with what the basics the post includes: get a decently configured browser, toggle off as many privacy invasive settings as you can, disable the telemetry service, and try to limit the bloat Microsoft likes to include during or after installation.

I’d also very carefully vet any sort of scripts, custom ISOs, and the like if you choose to use them. You’d be putting a lot of faith on whoever made them. And probably don’t worry about VPNs and such, they’re not going to do anything to hide the fact that you (presumably) purchased games under your name and you’re using your account to play them.

I’m typing this up on the fly and by no means the leading expert in the field, but these would probably get you a good 95% there. Happy gaming