As of more recently:

• The identity system is still the same, keys aren’t rotatable and still the core of your account. Outside of edge cases like Frost Bunkers (outsourcing key management to a cluster of third party servers), or platforms like DiVine letting you register with an email, keys remain pretty much the same.
• Private infomration like DMs have been altered. They’re still E2E encrypted, but now only the people involved in the conversation can request a copy of the encrypted DM (I assume that’s what you’re referring to, but I may be mistaken).
• Media attachements are usually uploaded to Blossom servers now. Standard notes still only embed remote media, but the ecosystem has a semi decentralized means of hosting content, and most clients will have a more standard ‘upload and share’ type of feature that most other platforms/protocols have.
• The more recent outbox model (on supported clients) allows you to set the relays that will host your content and replies/reactions to your content, diversifying the ecosystem away from a handful of big relays. Software like Ditto also provides a more Mastodon community style experience - even to the extent of supporting the Mastodon API.

The identity management is a big one. I’ve had my ActivityPub account get nuked when Nerdica offline, and my current ActivityPub server (Trom) is sometimes slow and misses remote events. Having an identity I control means that I don’t get my account nuked if something breaks, and I can participate within communities without being tied to their infrastrucure if the community is great while their infrastructure is not. It also works across different forms of servers - no needing accounts on Mastodon, Pixelfed, Writefreely, and Peertube in order to experience each form of social media on the network - on Nostr I can just use my same account across the network. It also makes me more tempted to host my own infrastructure, since if I get a case of the stupids, I can’t accidentally nuke my account.

I also like the protocol’s simplicity. It’s pretty lightweight, and pretty easy to extend with some custom code. While custom extentions would break normal stuff (adding custom stuff to shortform posts is just going to make your stuff not work with other people’s clients), creating something like a chess app or geocaching app is pretty easy. Even if said apps wouldn’t work with your standard shortform or longform clients, they’d still interact with other apps using the same custom code, and be useable with a standard account.

And, while I seem to be a minority in this thread, I also like the moderation structure of Nostr. There’s a few different ways to approach that:

• I use Nostr like RSS, I follow people I like and see their content - and I moderate it like I ‘moderate’ an RSS feed, i.e. choosing who I do and don’t want to see.
• There are other ways to moderate though, for example, by pulling people you follow from the whole network while only setting your global feed (if your client supports a global feed) to pull from specific relays.
• Or you could use something like Ditto, which is a Nostr relay behind a Mastodon front end. Ditto gives users a local feed and global feed (though I beleive both can be enabled or disabled), with the content on the Ditto server being capable of moderating content in the exact same way any Activity Pub server can (including accessing content or controlling moderation via the Mastodon API).
• Last, if I was famous or had people trying to spam me, I could also set my inbox relay (place where people send their replies on outbox model supported clients) to a relay I control, then set rules/filters on who’s allowed to reply and/or what content replies could contain.

Cool. Looks about right to me, not that I’m an expert. Bridgy Fed and Mostr do allow you to chain them together and do Nostr <> AT communication (though more recently there’s also Eclipse.Pub that does Nostr <> AT). There are also a few other protocols still in use (Diaspora, DFRN, Zot, Nomad - Diaspora, Friendica, Hubzilla, Streams respectively) although all but Diaspora all internally bridge to Activity Pub so I’m not sure how they’d fit into your model.

I’m kind of the oppisite in that I prefer Nostr over ActivityPub, but both have their merits. As for technical ways Activity Pub has a leg up:

• Comunities - Activity Pub is built around individual instances, with people able to join communities focused on their interests and/or that have their preferred moderation policies. Some software exists to do similar things on Nostr, but that’s not what most people use.
• Platforms - In a similar vein, Activity Pub is probably easier to make a platform out of, be it Meta making Threads or you making your own social media service for your friends. On Nostr people’s accounts exist outside of the infrastructure they use, so it’d be hard to provide a more unified experience.
• Ease of Use - Activity Pub generally has a lower technical barrier to entry, you can sign up with an email and a password on most servers. Outside of (upcoming) DiVine or using Frost Bunkers, there’s really no easy way to join Nostr without learning how to manage keys.
• Standardization - Acitivity Pub has existed for the better part of a decade, and the protocol hasn’t changed much for a while. Nostr is not only newer, but breaks it’s functionality into various NIPs (rules on how to interpret posts of specific types, e.g. shortform text, longform text, livestreams, etc) of which there’s 100+ official ones (and plenty of unnofocial ones).

There’s a couple different implementations that might be interesting to cover, depending on what you had in mind:

Friendica, Hubzilla, and Streams all support Activity Pub but focus more on a Facebook style social media instead of a standard microblogging platform.

Writefreely, Plume, Wordpress (via plugin), and Ghost (via plugin) all support activity pub and focus on long form content.

Peertube focuses on longform video, Loops on shortform video, and Funkwhale on audio based content.

There’s also bridges from Activity Pub to AT (Bluesky) and Nostr as well.

Looks like a cross between Zot and Nostr. It looks like it’s got some interesting features, namely the key based identities, easy migration, and it being designed around implementing custom features into the protocol while hopefully remaining compatible with other poly servers.

But I’m not really sure there’d be too much of a point in using it. Zot, Nostr, and AT (Bluesky) both already have the former two - with Nostr having the latter as well, and AT having a limited amount of the latter (Lexicons add flexibility but break compatibility). Although I only skimmed through the docs I can’t see features big enough that would make someone implement polyproto over using an existing protocol that already has a userbase.

It might be handy as a server that is centered around polyproto, but compatible with other software (kind of like how Friendica isn’t actually activity pub, but bridges things internally). That way you’d get the benefits of polyproto when talking with others on poly, while still being able to communicate with others on other protocols. But it doesn’t look like they’re aiming for that - I’m not a cryptography expert, but they’re using X.509-based keys. Both Nostr and AT use secp256k1, so had they used those you’d be able to use the same identity across multiple platforms (even if the posts had to be bridged/translated since the json formatting would be different).

If you’re looking for a central home server, private key powered accounts hidden behind a domain based username, the ability to instantly migrate servers, and a protocol that supported heavy customization, I’d recommend looking into ditto. It’s built on Nostr, but it’s built around being a more Activity Pub style home server (and it even works with Mastodon API capable clients). Ditto is nearly 1:1 with what it looks like polyproto wants to build, and it already exists right now on a protocol with an active userbase, so I’m not quite sure what the goal would be in making another protocol.

Or maybe I’m just being dumb and there’s more to polyproto than I realize.

Like others have said, it’s way more resource intensive than text based systems. Even discounting higher res vids, if you go to any random larger YT channel and download all their videos in 144p 480p and 720p it’ll be quite a lot larger than you might expect. Sure, if you’re serious about it you could get an array of hard drives and a small server, but you’re talking hundreds of bucks and lots of upkeep. Outsource it to a VPS and AWS buckets and you’ve still got upkeep but now you’ve added an extra 0 to your bill.

There’s not enough charitable nerds on the internet to host even a fraction of 1% of Youtube. It’s even worse if self hosting instances is pushed. Even as a fellow tech nerd, no way I’m hosting my own instance just so I can share a video once in a blue moon. Something that always gets my goat in fediverse discourse is when people always jump to saying something along the lines of “just host your own” then wonder why AP went from ~2.5M users to 0.8M users.

There’s also some Fediverse specific issues that hold back a more mainstream audience. There’s some fringe political stuff on both sides of the isle which can pretty easily scare off people, and defederation combined with peertube’s more siloed approach makes discovery near nil. (can’t see content from remote peertube instances unless somebody has already subscribed to that channel on the remote instance from your local instance AFAIK).

Then there’s the new platform (or in this case many platforms connected via one protocol) issues. Lack of users, limited/no monetization, limited development/support, and very few pros + a lot of cons at first glance from somebody who doesn’t consider tech a hobby and is comparing it to established platforms.

Edit: Can’t remember who, but iirc a peertube user I follow who regularly deletes their videos because their host doesn’t give them too much space. It’s great for a less big tech way to see their latest videos, but not acceptable if anyone’s gonna bill something like that as the next big video platform.

While it’s probably not exactly what you’re looking for, I wanted to give vibe coding a try and wound up making a discord like client if you think it might be handy. It’s not actually a chat server, it’s just a client that uses a chat style layout to display posts under the mastodon api.

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.

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