BearPear

I am actually looking forward to threads taking off. I, as a mastodon user, will be able to follow my friends, celebrities, artists and interact with them when federation is activated. It is hard to get friends on to mastodon. The software is great and is better than Twitter, but the people are not on Mastodon but on Twitter, Instagram, etc.

Now, I know platforms by Meta (Facebook) are terrible and spy and leech out pretty much all the data from users. I am also aware that Meta has some hidden agenda behind the launch of threads. Yes, I also read about EEE(Embrace, Extend and Extinguish). Even if Threads decides to drop federation/activitypub, I don't think the fediverse will be harmed. I quote the founder of Mastodon

There are comparisons to be made between Meta adopting ActivityPub for its new social media platform and Meta adopting XMPP for its Messenger service a decade ago. There was a time when users of Facebook and users of Google Talk were able to chat with each other and with people from self-hosted XMPP servers, before each platform was locked down into the silos we know today. What would stop that from repeating? Well, even if Threads abandoned ActivityPub down the line, where we would end up is exactly where we are now. XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.

I think many instance admins are all ready to defederate with threads. It just doesn't feel right. Imo, we should welcome users from threads and see how it goes.

What are your thoughts?

It has been years since I have installed a custom rom on my device.

Today, I successfully installed Lineage OS on my Xiaomi phone. The rom is no longer maintained by Lineage, so I had difficulty finding the ROM file since the team removed it from their website. I searched through some websites and I was able to finally find the .zip file. I also had difficulty in unlocking the bootloader because the Xiaomi unlocking tool would not send the OTP to my device. But I was able to fix the problem by using an updated version of the tool.

Flashing the rom was super easy. The instructions on Lineage OS website is really good and helpful. I had also watched a video on the process. Initially, I was hesitant to install the rom as the volume buttons don't really work properly. With the help of ADB and a ball-pen to push the volume buttons, everything went well.

The main intention behind installing Lineage OS was to get rid of Xiaomi apps and spyware off my phone. But I still have gapps(nano) on my phone. Yes, I know about microg and magisk! The process of installing it seems really complex. Also, Aurora Droid no longer works, since google rate limited the anonymous accounts.

I like only use three closed source and non free apps. The rest are from F-droid.

TLDR: I installed Lineageos on my phone with gapps. The installation process went surprisingly well. I did not expect flashing the rom to be this easy.