Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Screw it, I’ll host it myself

markozivanovic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 495 posts

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#71

Post by judge2020 »

ziml77 wrote: post #58
imwillofficial wrote: post #26

Ok, I’m SUPER into self hosting, but this article? No way. 1) Duck out isn’t a thing, just stop it. 2) Half the articles cited as examples of corporate abuse were later revealed to be mistakes by the user or easily avoidable pitfalls. 3) Self hosting still requires trust (software you’re running, DNS, domains, ISP, etc...) The line of who to trust and how far is a tough one to answer, even for the informed. How I sol…

I am perpetually confused about why people think that self-hosting on a VPS solves their privacy and security problems. While I'm sure there are controls in place at reputable VPS providers, it wouldn't be too difficult for them to grab absolutely anything they want. Even disk encryption doesn't save you. You're in a VM, they can watch the memory if they need to. Using a VPS can also make you more identifiable. Your…

A setup that probably works is vps -> tor -> vpn or some other order of these three, but I couldn't find any sort of blog that detailed setting up something like this so I imagine very few people are doing it.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#72

Post by clairity »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #56
clairity wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yah, microsoft won office productivity 2 decades ago with exchange and outlook (and owa), not just excel and word. the integration between email, calendar, contacts, documents, and access control is still unmatched, certainly not by google's hodgepodge of web apps. proton is working on calendaring but it still has a long ways to go.

> exchange and outlook (and owa)... the integration between email, calendar, contacts, documents, and access control is still unmatched So we're just going to pretend that iCloud doesn't exist, then? Is that it?

nope, icloud is great at both losing and duplicating data reliably.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#73

Post by habibur »

Hosting my own too. There's gmail as backup. But host my mail server, webmail, imap, smtp everthing.

Blocking spam isn't that problem. But making sure your mail goes to the receiver's inbox is.

You can block 90% of the spam by using only reverse DNS lookup -- doesn't match? Reject. 90% of the remaining can blocked using DKIM, SPF checks. No need for ip black hole check or spamassassin training.

The benefit : I can block a sender or his domain in a single click from webmail. Couldn't do that on gmail.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#75

Post by turtlebits »

llaolleh wrote: post #59

I really love the idea of self-hosting, but man, you have to go through 9 layers of configuration hell and come back out alive. It's not necessarily fun programming - more of changing variables and running commands, which you might get wrong anyway. I wonder if there's a viable business model for this. Automate the setup through scripts and process automation for any provider. You pay a one time fee + a reasonable am…

This is what Kubernetes is for. Personally, I run k3s, but setup and config looks like this -

1. stand up a cluster. (two commands, install docker, install k3s) 2. apply yaml files (kubectl apply -f .)

I run 6 services/"apps" on 2 OVH servers ($6.70/mo)

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#76

Post by 0xbkt »

bscphil wrote: post #47
napsterbr wrote: post #21

> I’m living in Germany, so the obvious choice was to spin up my instances in Vultr‘s* data center in Frankfurt, as ping is the lowest to that center for me. The author is probably aware of this, but just in case they aren't: Hetzner is an amazing company with two or three datacenters in Germany. I don't remember if any of them are in Frankfurt, but given they offer VPSs and beefy dedicated machines, I'd be fine trad…

I don't know what qualifies as "amazing company" in your eyes (they're certainly cheap for what you get), but my experience was certainly very bad: I rented a VPS from them experimentally for a month, then left to go on vacation thinking I had cancelled it, but I had not. They left it running for another month that I hadn't paid for, and then sent the bill for the extra month to collections, so that's presumably affe…

Agreed. Hetzner is very strict about not leaving a penny of theirs wasted/delayed without compensation. I know a couple friends here in Turkey who were contacted by a local collection agency for late settlement and were brought up with legal proceeding if they're not settling it soon. Aware of this, I started to never ever /forget/ about paying any of my bills on time.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#77

Post by lisper »

ziml77 wrote: post #58
imwillofficial wrote: post #26

Ok, I’m SUPER into self hosting, but this article? No way. 1) Duck out isn’t a thing, just stop it. 2) Half the articles cited as examples of corporate abuse were later revealed to be mistakes by the user or easily avoidable pitfalls. 3) Self hosting still requires trust (software you’re running, DNS, domains, ISP, etc...) The line of who to trust and how far is a tough one to answer, even for the informed. How I sol…

I am perpetually confused about why people think that self-hosting on a VPS solves their privacy and security problems. While I'm sure there are controls in place at reputable VPS providers, it wouldn't be too difficult for them to grab absolutely anything they want. Even disk encryption doesn't save you. You're in a VM, they can watch the memory if they need to. Using a VPS can also make you more identifiable. Your…

VPS doesn't solve privacy and security, it solves getting locked out of your account because some algorithm decided you were peddling child porn.

If you want privacy and security and you don't trust your provider, then you have to build your own hardware and compile everything you run on it from vetted source, including your kernel. You can do it, but most people decide that on balance its better to trust someone.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#78

Post by jeffbee »

napsterbr wrote: post #21

> I’m living in Germany, so the obvious choice was to spin up my instances in Vultr‘s* data center in Frankfurt, as ping is the lowest to that center for me. The author is probably aware of this, but just in case they aren't: Hetzner is an amazing company with two or three datacenters in Germany. I don't remember if any of them are in Frankfurt, but given they offer VPSs and beefy dedicated machines, I'd be fine trad…

I would say that hosting in a German datacenter owned by a German company is the worst way to get complete exposure to the ham-handed and completely out-of-control German intelligence apparatus. Maybe being a German citizen protects you slightly from the BND, in the same way that the NSA technically doesn't spy on Americans, but I doubt it.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#79

Post by mattowen_uk »

Y'know what, Although I'm currently self hosting my email, my websites, my storage, my SQL, my Active Directory etc., I'm also in the process of migrating the whole lot to Azure and/or independent hosting.

Why? It's just too much hassle these days; I want my down-time to be no longer dictated by my infrastructure. I don't want to have to spend off-work hours making sure my boxes are patched, my disks are raided, my offsite-backups are scheduled, and my web/email services are running. I just want it all to work, and when it doesn't, I want to be able to complain to someone else and make it their problem to fix it.

For my data, I'll probably still have an on-site backup, but everything else can just live in the cloud, and I'll start sleeping better, due to less stress about keeping it all secure and running.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#80

Post by Robotbeat »

mikepurvis wrote: post #55
clairity wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i've actually daydreamed about starting a computing appliance company that would make a variety of services plug and play for consumers and small businesses, from email to storage, to networking, to security, and to smart home. it's actually the direction apple is headed, but they're encumbered by the innovator's dilemma, which leaves an opportunity for an upstart. google and facebook are similarly too focused on adt…

It would be fun stuff to build, but I feel like you'd struggle to make money. Google and Amazon can afford to give away the hardware, and they can smuggle their ecosystem into your house as a thermostat or a smart speaker or a phone app, or whatever. Like, how do you persuade the audience of enthusiasts (think: Unifi buyers) to pay for a subscription to managed software they run on their own computers, raspis, whatev…

Maybe it doesn’t need to make lots of money? Just gotta build a strong community.
Post reply on HN