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Always Own Your Platform (2019)

alwaysownyourplatform.com

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Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#101

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

NateEag wrote: post #88
FalconSensei wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SSGs with plain text files are brilliant once you are set up, but it's a big hurdle getting there. Even in that case, not nearly as practical, unless you mostly do long-form and only post from your computer. Even with SSG set up, having to be on the computer to create a draft, or make a quick correction, is really a bother. Also, when you own everything, you end up spending more time tinkering with it, which is not…

> Even with SSG set up, having to be on the computer to create a draft, or make a quick correction, is really a bother. I think you might be able to solve this with Syncthing and a watch process on your syncthing server. Commit and render on each change, and optionally sync if the rendered site is different from the previous version. ...granted, that's a really tech-nerd setup.

How is running syncthing better than git or the site generator?

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#102

Post by heywoodlh »

spatley wrote: post #89
heywoodlh wrote: post #23

> Distribute [your content] via methods you control. I'm being nitpicky but it feels off to me to call people out on owning their own platform but then use Cloudflare's CDN instead of running their own. And if they did run their own CDN, they would probably have to use AWS or another worldwide cloud provider and not own the hardware. And if I were Richard Stallman I would probably come down on you for using proprieta…

The day cloudflare starts filtering individual pieces of content, I would get out fast. FB, twitter, et. al. show me what they think will keep me looking at them for as long as possible. It is only coincidence that it is sometimes content I actually want. If I can get all my friends to just post by RSS I don’t need or want anything else those platforms do.

Sure, I agree. I actually have no problems with Cloudflare, CDNs, etc. I was just using the website's use of Cloudflare CDN as an example that "owning" your "platform" is subjective to everyone's personal experience and values. And I have a problem that the site encourages people to call out others who don't line up with their view of what owning the platform means to them.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#105

Post by lmm »

spatley wrote: post #89
heywoodlh wrote: post #23

> Distribute [your content] via methods you control. I'm being nitpicky but it feels off to me to call people out on owning their own platform but then use Cloudflare's CDN instead of running their own. And if they did run their own CDN, they would probably have to use AWS or another worldwide cloud provider and not own the hardware. And if I were Richard Stallman I would probably come down on you for using proprieta…

The day cloudflare starts filtering individual pieces of content, I would get out fast. FB, twitter, et. al. show me what they think will keep me looking at them for as long as possible. It is only coincidence that it is sometimes content I actually want. If I can get all my friends to just post by RSS I don’t need or want anything else those platforms do.

How are you defining "filtering individual pieces of content"? Cloudflare kicked off The Daily Stormer and acknowledged that they were doing so as their own choice for political reasons.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#106

Post by lmm »

bragr wrote: post #44
heywoodlh wrote: post #23

> Distribute [your content] via methods you control. I'm being nitpicky but it feels off to me to call people out on owning their own platform but then use Cloudflare's CDN instead of running their own. And if they did run their own CDN, they would probably have to use AWS or another worldwide cloud provider and not own the hardware. And if I were Richard Stallman I would probably come down on you for using proprieta…

Unless you are using Cloudflare's specialized security services, CDN is pretty interchangeable and easy to switch between. You can ever do dynamic DNS things to use multiple CDNs at the same time and shift different traffic segments onto different providers if you are into that sort of things, or tier one CDN behind another to act as a mid tier. I don't really understand why the decentralized internet folks harp on C…

Cloudflare serve something like 12% of the entire web don't they? That's more than enough to be worrying even if they theoretically have some competition.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#107

Post by digitallyfree »

wcedmisten wrote: post #97
digitallyfree wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just the data, but the infrastructure as well. A CDN lets me host on my own equipment rather than renting cloud compute - and I can change CDN providers anytime I like.

If you don't mind me asking, how do you have your own infrastructure configured? I just recently set up my own blog on a DO droplet, which is fairly vendor-portable if I need to change cloud providers. I had always assumed that serving content over a non-commercial connection would have some issues, although this was more of a vague doubt in the back of my mind. Do you worry about having greater exposure to (possibly…

I talked a bit about this in another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31686615#31687589), but let me provide a quick runthrough.

I have 443 port forwarded on my Ubi Edgerouter, which sends those to a container on my server with SSLH. SSLH forwards OpenVPN packets to my pfSense VM and SSL packets to NGINX which directs the web traffic to other containers hosting the actual web services. I have a subdomain with DDNS that is routed to my public dynamic IP.

The above is for services that don't go through the CDN like Matrix. For my public web site which uses Cloudflare, I use an Argo tunnel directly from the webserver container to the CDN itself. Due to the CDN and the static site it barely affects my connection. Honestly what slows down my connection is if several people use full-tunnel VPN at once due to my limited upload speed.

I run enterprise equipment and know how to use it, and my provider allows me to connect my own equipment to their network. They also permit home hosting within reason. The line is also very stable, so uptime is good and things are reliable when everything is properly set up. I also have a backup server to run my VMs if the main one fails, have a spare modem, etc. The idea is that if anything happens on my end it can be fixed in a couple hours.

Security wise the VPN is locked down and so is Matrix (access for family members only, no public account creation permitted). Bots do occassionally connect to my public IP but its nothing to worry about. For the website CF takes care of traffic spikes. Since everything is in seperate containers and VMs in a worst case scenario the damage done will be limited.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#108

Post by rapind »

heywoodlh wrote: post #40
rapind wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like security, you settle for the risk you can afford and are comfortable with. The cloud muddies your grasp of the risks though. A lot of these cloud offerings (like k8s) are incredibly complex, and therefore have a lot of attack vectors, and a lot of points of failure. We depend on layers built on layers, built on layers. You can't really eliminate all of these dependencies, but you can eliminate / reduce some…

> Just like security, you settle for the risk you can afford and are comfortable with Right, I totally agree. What I'm not a fan of is this site actively encouraging people to call out others for not owning their own content. If we are gonna compare to security, it would be like suggesting everyone should adhere to the same threat model -- which just isn't practical. > The cloud muddies your grasp of the risks though…

> Are you saying "you" generally or me specifically?

Generally, as in all of us.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#109

Post by heywoodlh »

digitallyfree wrote: post #107
wcedmisten wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't mind me asking, how do you have your own infrastructure configured? I just recently set up my own blog on a DO droplet, which is fairly vendor-portable if I need to change cloud providers. I had always assumed that serving content over a non-commercial connection would have some issues, although this was more of a vague doubt in the back of my mind. Do you worry about having greater exposure to (possibly…

I talked a bit about this in another comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31686615#31687589 ), but let me provide a quick runthrough. I have 443 port forwarded on my Ubi Edgerouter, which sends those to a container on my server with SSLH. SSLH forwards OpenVPN packets to my pfSense VM and SSL packets to NGINX which directs the web traffic to other containers hosting the actual web services. I have a subdoma…

Fun rundown to read, thanks for sharing!
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