https://contentauthenticity.org/how-it-works

The page is very light on technical detail, but I think this is a system like trusted platform modules (TPMs), where there is a hardware root of trust in the camera holding the private key of an attestation certificate signed by the manufacturer at the time of manufacture, and it signs the pictures it takes. The consortium is eager for people to take this up (“open-source software!”) and support showing and appending to provenance data in their software. The more people do so, the more valuable the special content-authenticating cameras become.

But TPMs on PCs have not been without vulnerabilities. I seem to recall that some manufacturers used a default or example private key for their CA certificates, or something. Vulnerabilities in the firmware of a content-authenticating camera could be used to jailbreak it and make it sign arbitrary pictures. And, unless the CAI is so completely successful that every cell phone authenticates its pictures (which means we all pay rent to the C2PA), some of the most important images will always be unauthenticated under this scheme.

And the entire scheme of trusted computing relies on wresting ultimate control of a computing device from its owner. That’s how other parties can trust the device without trusting the user. It can be guaranteed that there are things the device will not do, even if the user wants it to. This extends the dominance of existing power structures down into the every-day use of the device. What is not permitted, the device will make impossible. And governments may compel the manufacturer to do one thing or another. See “The coming war on general computation,” Cory Doctorow, 28c3.

What if your camera refused to take any pictures as long as it’s located in Gaza? Or what if spies inserted code into a compulsory firmware update that would cause a camera with a certain serial number to recognize certain faces and edit those people out of pictures that it takes, before it signs them as being super-authentic?

My ergo journey started with similar requirements to yours - specifically including the Y and B keys. Along the way, I learned how important layers are for comfort, ditched QWERTY entirely for Colemak DH, bought a 3D printer, and ended up at 40%. Several years ago, there was a term “1KFH” (“one key from home”) people used to describe the amazing amount of comfort they found when they never had to move their fingers more than one key away from home position, nor to move their hands.

I’m not saying you have to change your requirements, now or ever, but I think people who start to make their own ergo keyboards may be subject to this sort of requirements drift, such that if they ever make it to the product phase, their products aren’t what they initially expected to be building. And maybe this sort of dynamic is what makes it less likely for the product you are looking for to have been built already.

Yeah, I did one for my Dactyl Manuform and just oversized it by a couple millimeters and stuck Amazon bubbly envelopes on the inside. The bottom of each half is flat, the same shape, and rubberized, so the covers just go over the top, I clap the bottoms together (tee hee?), and chunk the whole thing in a lunch bag that barely fits. It stays together without slipping and without any attachment between the two cover halves. Janky but it’s worked for years.

That’s beautiful!

I 3d-printed a hard box for my Fourier. https://gitlab.com/jaredjennings/fourier-box. (wince, there is no photo nor even an STL in that repository.) I wanted it to fit in my backpack with a laptop and books, so it holds the two halves side by side, not stacked. I had to print it in two pieces and friction-weld them together. That sounds fancy, but it just means you take a piece of filament, put it in a Dremel chuck, and draw on your model. Wherever you push down, the friction makes the end of the filament melt. Then I put on some Sci-Grip 4 (dichloromethane), which further solvent-welded the joint.

If you wanted to make one like this for your cepstrum, you’d need to do it in more pieces because that’s larger than a Fourier. Your case would end up to be the size of a laptop. You might not want that.

Uh, I think the Glove80 uses Choc switches, right? For heavy tactile in Choc you would want Burnt Orange. Not sure whether that’s an option they provide or what.

Bastard Keyboards – I’ve talked with Quentin and he seems like a cool guy. He’s an innovator in the use of printed-circuit boards for keywell keyboards. That’s important because it makes keywell keyboards much easier and quicker to make, without the huge cost associated with polyimide flexible PCBs. He has high quality standards, too, in my limited experience of his products.

I agree that you should get a keywell keyboard. I haven’t read any specific reviews (I’m down the make-your-own rabbit hole instead), but I’ve seen some sentiment that the Glove80 is better than Kinesis’ offerings, and I believe it’s more programmable.

And about that last, if you “have to learn how to type again from scratch,” you should use a key layout that will work best for you. This may not be a layout that already exists! Colemak and all its variants, for example, put A and R under your left ring and pinky finger. You might want K and J there instead. Or if it’s easy to press the key your left ring and pinky are on, but hard to move them to a different key, you might be OK with A and R. Though Dvorak, for example, has left-handed and right-handed variants, I don’t think there are any predefined layouts for people who want to type more letters with their right hand than their left – or to be more likely to need to move fingers on their right hand more often than their left.

Carpalx is a body of work that lets you define the typing effort for each key, and finds an optimum key layout for you. I haven’t used it myself - Colemak DH is a sufficiently high local maximum of goodness for me and I haven’t gone down that hill to find a higher maximum yet. But the moment you’re in may afford you a unique opportunity.

http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?typing_effort

If you do end up making one, or having one made, you might be interested in something like the Concertina.

I haven’t built a musical keyboard, but I’ve taken apart a home (electric) organ or two. I hear that one among the many options you have if a modern pipe organ is being made for you, is different strengths of magnets that initially impede your keypresses, like the pneumatic valves would if it weren’t electronically controlled; as well as different woods for your keys. There’s a channel on YouTube to which I’m subscribed where the guy is building his own tiny pipe organ (like, 30 pipes, the size of a large suitcase).

The hexagonal key layout mentioned by others, and also often seen on one side of an accordion, is one among several alternative musical keyboard layouts: the white and black keys are sort of a musical QWERTY. Not the best, but the largest installed base, the most likely for new people to learn, and the most likely to be attached to an arbitrary keyboard instrument you come upon.

I have a Folger Tech i3 2020, so named because its frame is made from 20x20mm aluminum extrusion. No bed levelling, no quiet steppers, no all metal hot end, five years old. I’ve added a part cooling fan whose nozzle I printed off Thingiverse, a janky ring of 24v LED lights, and a cheapo 0.6mm nozzle. Sometimes I have to print part of the first layer a couple of times and move the z end stop to get it right. It takes about 10 minutes every couple of months, so not a big deal.

I say this not to recommend this printer to you today, but to say that even if you don’t manage to get perfect prints out of the box, the fiddling it takes to get what you want is probably not that bad.

Besides keyboards, and an occasional toy car or something, I’ve printed a replacement shade for a little fluorescent kitchen light, an adapter to fit a lampshade that was on sale to a lamp that was on sale, a fancy toilet paper spool, and a custom wrench to try to remove my washing machine’s tub. Oh and brackets that hold my cell phone, so I can use my ergo keyboard to type at a terminal on my phone, broadcast my pirate signal, and hack into the Matrix, while riding the bus. :)

https://github.com/alonswartz/trackpoint is one data point. I don’t know where exactly you’re supposed to get the trackpoint module.

There are all sorts of Corne variants, as I recall, where circular trackpads are added. Some Dactyl Manuform forks add a trackball.

I just bought an oak board about 1/4 inch thick and 6 inches wide, sawed it off about two feet long, and made sure my keyboard was rubberized on the bottom