Does that mean my actual home server is behind a VPN connection but has its traffic transparently routed to the external VPS, which eliminates the need for opening ports on the residential router?

There are several points to be made:

The Old Reddit, whatever it means, is long gone forever. Aaron is gone. Spez does not care. No apologies or retracting will be made and that’s it.

Reddit must have calculated that there are enough ‘casual’ crowd (not a long timer, does not use or care about 3rd party apps or the old interface, comes for the quick laughs and watches ads) so they could withstand whatever pressure the ‘hard-core’ crowd (long timer, uses and cares about old UI and API changes, does not generate ad views in general, spends long hours in site) generates.

Reddit must have also considered the possibility of the second crowd simply going away. I suspect Spez or the investors simply does not give a damn about it. Ad revenues are everything and there’s a loud minority that threatens to leave? Why should they care, after all? All they see is a potential for “more” growth.

What they do and must care is the eventual entrance of a sizeable competition that eats into their revenues - less visitors mean less ad revenues. Lemmy and Fediverse, as much as I love it and will keep using it, is not that threat - yet.

What will probably happen is that the wider internet will label the riot (as of now) a massive failure, laugh at the “bravery” of slacktivism or whatever the latest meme can be slapped at.

Despite that, it should mark the emerging of a sustainable group of Reddit-like communities that could, in one day, become the competition Digg never thought they would face.

No, I don’t think Lemmy is perfect. I do have an issue with the dev’s political stance. But as long as they don’t become the Spez of what was supposed to be the Federation, and the software and the protocol and the community can sustain and rule themselves, things might be alright.

Reddit will eventually die, like many other internet websites. Perhaps not now. They won’t go out in a spectacular way the Digg v4 happened, but simply wither away like Facebook. But we have another home, and it’s all that matters.

I was on the same boat, man. I was doing really well in HS, always thought I was going to be a scientist, etc… college years hit me hard, not only in the materials difficulty and studying habits, but also had a nasty incident which gave me PTSD on top of that.

Long story short, I also dropped out of Physics after years of trying and pretending I could. I couldn’t. I also cried. First to myself and then others.

After that… it took many years but I eventually got back to college for that degree in Comp Sci. I am already working as a programmer, so it helps me focus in my path to follow.

If you’re following up with an engineering degree, that’s actually a solid choice. A lot of scientists are engineers too, both are STEM so there’s a lot of compatible subjects if you’re still eyeing on the physics path. You could get a bachelor’s in engineering and then a masters in physics or astronomy, for example, or simply follow where your heart or money is.

Don’t pressure yourself too much on dropping out. Yes, it’s a failure and it will serve well to retrace the steps and identify what made us fail, but it’s never the person themselves. You made a mistake, but you are not the mistake or the failure. That means you can and will be better.

Sorry for the long rant. Hope you get better man.