Good stuff, that’s not terrible at all, just the tinyest bit of preplanning - the phone hotspot is an excellent idea.

How have you found offline mode to work while traveling? I remember hearing early on it was a bear to use without wifi without extra steps.

I’m in the same boat as you. For me, the ability to be with other people not in front of my computer, would be my driver.

How likely is a federated threads going to be used to harvest data for whatever advertising or AI purpose meta has?

Aside from ensuring their launch product has immediate content, the only reason meta would do this is for that $$.

That said, it could be a symbiotic relationship with instances who’s users aren’t super worried about that & find value from the addtl content it will surely bring.