💾 Archived View for jsreed5.org › log › 2024 › 202406 › 20240616-no-use-for-betrusted.gmi captured on 2024-06-20 at 11:51:00. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2024-06-19)
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Earlier today I came across a link in Geminispace to the that led me to Precursor, the hardware component of the Betrusted project. Betrusted aims to build a device using open hardware and software that is secure, private and simple.^ The Precursor is available to purchase today and comes with features such as a FIDO2/U2F compatible password vault, a Matrix client, and an ephemeral storage area for transferring files to other devices.
The project sounds fascinating and I'd love to buy one, but I doubt I would get much utility out of it. The Precursor fulfills some of the roles a device like my PlanetComputers Gemini PDA or my ClockworkPi DevTerm already fills, such as my desire for a small form factor and its communication suites. The rest of its functions are incredibly niche and do not serve a need I have in my daily life. But why is that?
To me, the primacy purpose of any electric device is to perform a task that a mechanical, chemical or other kind of device either cannot perform or performs too inefficiently for the circumstances. In the case of a computer, I find that such tasks broadly fall into one of two categories: computational needs and the ability to communicate with other people. The Betrusted site states explicitly that Precursor's computational capabilities are roughly on par with those of the Nintendo DS: certainly enough to perform the operations required to run a basic OS, but nowhere near enough to replace a general-purpose computer. Clearly I wouldn't want to buy Betrusted for that reason. That leaves the need to communicate with others.
I talk to several people online on a regular basis. Unfortunately, almost all of them use closed platforms, primarily Discord. Discord and Facebook Messenger, along with most other major messaging platforms, don't support open protocols like those used in Betrusted, and it would be extremely unlikely that the device would get support in the future. Why this is, and what can be done about these closed platforms, is beyond the scope of this log, but the situation frustrates me nonetheless.
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[Last updated: 2024-06-16]