I believe they’ve fixed the DFI issue, the new one I got maybe a year ago is a different design, with less components and they appear to be sealed. Hasn’t failed yet, fwiw.
I understand that federation with kbin.social specifically is not working correctly but I’m seeing similar things with other instances also from here. Lemmy.ca as one example. Way more posts there than what shows up here in the magazines I’m subscribed to.