I’ve started OMAD (One Meal A Day) for past month. It seems to work well. It’s basically intermittent fasting - 22-23 hour fast, 1-2 hour eating. You can drink coffee, water and zero sugar drinks during the fasting period but only eat for one period a day.

It’s been working well for me - I realise I don’t feel hungry during the day, I was just bored and habitually eating. I’ve lost weight (which was my main aim) but I find my day no longer revolves around the other mealtimes, and also I actually value my main meal now so I’ve been eating better quality and trying to actually cook. It’s also saved me money not needing to buy breakfast or lunch foods, and no snacks, and my food budget is concentrated into one good meal a day.

It’s been surprisingly easy to stick to.

Obviously it won’t be for everyone and you need to consider the health benefits and potential drawbacks first, but it’s working well for me.

So a few options (I’m on kbin but similar):

• move to an instance where the users aren’t signed up to those communities (remember All is not the whole fediverse, All is just the content that is local to that instance plus that users on your instance have subbed to. On a big instance you will see a lot in all)
• block individual communities or entire instances. I have been blocking the numerous meme communities for example which tidies up my All feed, but it is tedious as there are so many
• browse Lemmy or Kbin using Subbed instead of All or Local views. On kbin you can do that by going to /sub, clicking the link on the toolbar or setting it as your default view.
• create your own personal instance of lemmy or kbin and only sign up for content you want on that aerver. You can browse new communities to join via other instances then add it to your instance.

They have range of stuff; the cheapest is their Leaf 2 - €240 which is 350 CAD or £210. But yes it is more expensive than Kobo and Amazon; I try to remember they subsidise their ebook readers as they want to lock you in to their stores, and the Boox is more versatile as an Android e-ink device. I haven’t used the Leaf 2 myself, but the reviews I’ve found sound like it’s a pretty good ereader.

If not interested in e-ink, then any good generic Android tablet beats out Kobo and Kindle devices for freedom and are comparable in price.

I have a Boox e-reader and love it. It’s an Android e-ink device so you get the benefits of being able to load android apps in, and you can put pretty much any ebook on there. That includes loading the Kindle App for Kindle books, other stores e-readers if you don’t want to strip DRM, and free readers like FBReader to read anything you want. They also have a colour device which is interesting for comics.

They have a range of devices, and I have a Boox Nova with FBReader (e-reader but not open source unfortunately) installed from the google play store on the device and Calibre on my PC (which is a cross-platform open source ebook management system). You can use Calibre to load and manage the books on your eReader, and manage and organize a big library of books on your PC or laptop.

It means I can read an ebook from any source (including bought on Amazon, ebooks I’ve bought in other stores android app, or in any app if I’ve removed the DRM from the book, and ePUBs or Mobi from anywhere in FBReader or your preferred ereader from the Play store) on one good e-ink device. You can probably side load Android APKs but I haven’t tried that. It’s also touch screen so can take notes and stuff on it. And because it’s an Android device I can also browse the internet and use android app like email etc. But it’s an e-ink device though so the screen isn’t designed for rapidly refreshing content; some Apps look janky on it and you can watch videos on it but they look a bit janky. It’s good for reading websites, news apps, PDFs, email; that kind of stuff. Not really good or intended for video, or games. It’s a superb e-reader, but with the added freedom of android. No amazon lock-in, no Kobo lock-in.

EDIT: Minor typos corrected

It depends what you use it for.

If you’re watching your own content within your home then Jellyfin is better. It’s free, open source and private. Your Jellyfin instance is yours and secure, and entirely under your control.

Plex’s differences are mostly behind it’s plex pass pay wall, and you sacrifice privacy using their platform. The key difference is really offline and remote viewing of content which is easier and slicker with plex (but doable with jellyfin), and the plex App maybe available a few more devices. There are also some credits and ad skipping features. That’s about it - I struggle to see the benefit in plex. The only other thing I can think of is some people prefer the interface?

I used to use Plex and got annoyed when I couldn’t view my content, which I host locally, because their login servers were down. Made me realise why did I need them so I researched a bit and switched to Jellyfin.

To be fair, they can “prempt” Threads.net by blocking the domains. That’s basically how they block other instances.

I personally think the default should be to block Threads.net and federate if and when a server wants to, rather than waiting for Meta to pull a switch. However I disagree with OP’s approach of blackmail and threats, and his idea he “owns” the communities he moderates.

This is true - the bigger impact would be on Kbin instances that are both Threadiverse and Microblogverse facing.

However, if you go on Mastodon you can see Lemmy threads as posts which you can click through to the hosting instance and also boost (but not downvote). So for Lemmy if Threads.net federates, the biggest impact would be exposure of content to Threads users who then come in to Lemmy instances but not logged in or who could boost content and distort things.

For Kbin instances and also Mastodon it could mean being swamped with content from Threads.net.

Personally I do think overall the Kbin/Lemmy/Mastodon servers should probably not federate with Threads.net. The content appears to be poor and it could flood the fediverse with crap, when really it’s still small and needs to grow organically. Threads.net is at 70m users already and rising rapidly, while Mastodon is at 8m (1.6m active) and the Threadiverse is more like 130k across Kbin and Lemmy. Mastodon/Kbin/Lemmy need time to establish what it means to be an independent federated social media network. They can always federate with Threads.net in the future - rather than it being Meta’s choice, it should be the communities choice if and when they want to federate with a behemoth network.

I think you’re probably best shutting “your” subs and moving anyway - if you want to dictate how a server runs, you’re probably better off hosting your own instance. I’m not sure we need people in the fediverse who thinks a moderator owns a community - it’s just the other extreme from Reddit’s attitude that they own a community.

I happen to agree with defederating, but I don’t like threats and the idea of blackmail to a community.

I like and trust Proton Mail, and they support setting up custom domains while hosting your email data (for subscriber users).

You can then access it via their web mail box, via their Android and iOS apps, or via a desktop email client if you install their “bridge” application. The bridge application basically maintains the secure encryption ethos of their email system by ensuring all email traffic between your desktop and their servers remains encrypted, but can still be accessed via your preferred email clients such as Thunderbird or Outlook. The bridge is available for Windows, iOS and Linux.

I personally recommend Protonmail as it’s primary focus is security and encryption, yet it does this in a very well developed and slick interface, so you get the best of both worlds. I’m a subscriber and moved from Gmail about 2 years ago as I wanted better privacy and security (they even have great tools for importing your old emails from major web providers). I don’t have a custom domain but from my experiences of everything else they provide, I’d be confident it works as intended.

EDIT: In terms of cost, its €4 a month for the first tier which includes support for 1 custom domain, 10 email addresses, and 15GB of storage, or €10 for 500GB, 3 domains, 15 emails. They also include VPN, calendar, drive storage and a password manager in both.

I’d say the biggest reason is culture and identity. The threadiverse is small at present - about 120k - and the microblogverse is bigger - 8m - but still smaller than the Threads.net 70m already and potential 1bn if meta leverages instagram. Why would a smaller and growing new independent social media platform want to be swamped by a commercial tidal wave? There isn’t really a benefit to the independent parts of the Fediverse.

It’s better for the independent parts of the fediverse to grow organically, remain independent and grow it’s own identity rather than disappear into useless oblivion.

Also if I understand it correctly, the Threads.net is a microblogging site so while they may both use ActivityPub, Lemmy does not support microblog content. For Lemmy, it would mainly be the Lemmy content appearing within Threads.net. Federating with Threads.net is more of an issue for Kbin (which does both Threadiverse and Microblogverse content) and Mastodon (which does Microblogverse content) - the content would be visible in both directions. So for Lemmy it might be a big influx of users so may be manageable, but for Kbin & Mastodon it may also be a flood of content which might not be mangeable. But correct me if I’m wrong on that.

Lack of awareness of Kbin I think. Also the monthly average users are the same, but lots of communities were created on lemmy instances.

Lemmy is older and I think when people thought a million people had signed up they thought that was the place to be. But it was all bits and the two are similar in terms of users, although most Kbin users are on Kbin.social at the moment.

I’ve tried both and I prefer Kbin. I like the interface, I like the mobile PWA app, it just feels more modern and polished compared to lemmy. But it’s just a preference thing they’re largely the same.

Lots of people are suggesting network cables and the likes.

But if the data is so valuable you want to migrate it then isn’t it also worth backing it up? I’d buy an external HD, copy the data onto that and then copy it to your new laptop and keep the hard drive somewhere safe as a backup.