> I was a webmaster back in the days when one could debate cern vs ncsa and which provided a better server and for a while, I ran my own web servers at home on some static IPs from Speakeasy...
I fired up my first httpd when the current chair of UWashington CS&E was pissed off about a NYT article on how physicists were building this new-fangled computer network thing. So we have that in common ....
> The simple servers are still there. Grab a web server and put static files for it to be served - but people don't want that. They want a fully functional web application with persisted data with a maximum outage window less than the duration of a good night's sleep.
That's actually what most people who've ended up posting pictures on Instagram and blogging on Wordpress want. They need something one or maybe two steps up from a static site. Essentially, something like Squarespace but self-hosted.
> And then you've got to find some way to keep that device patched
Most linux distros can do a perfectly reasonable job of this already.
> For me, even imagining the work that I'd need to do to my home network to set up that
That reflects the incredibly limited work that has gone into making self-run servers easy, stable and correct over the last 25+ years.
> a quote from Ansel Adams about the darkroom and that it was a necessity for photography - but he'd rather be out there taking photographs than in the room making the print.
The difference is that we've have the capability to change the analogy stand-in for the dark room so that you have to spend almost no time on it at all. We haven't done it, because we took the path towards server-hosting companies and left the software to be as technical and fussy as almost anything out there. Adams would likely have been entirely fine with spending 15-30 mins a month in his darkroom.
> imagine a device on the network that is accepting all incoming traffic and talking to anyone who listens.
What web server does this? If such a machine was the only solution, then I'd agree with you - this would be a catastrophic issue. But we really don't use such systems anywhere and certainly would not do so for a toy-level home appliance.
> Spin up that server as an instance on AWS instead and then the worst that will happen is you'll rack up a large bill when it's compromised and someone runs a crypto miner on it.
Now that's a fair point.