The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free? • Hacker News Board

Re: The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

#161

Post by fragmede » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 6:39 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #159

fragmede wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions , and 70 % seems high to me, but let's look at some numbers. what is the cheapest real actual server you can buy, new, with a support contract from a reputable vendor like HP/Dell/etc? (Assume we're running both the db and web-server on one server.) And what's the cost of sitting it in a reputable colo? And then multiply that by, let's say two, to get redundancy in a us-west and us-east region. Ideally, we'd…

Your entire premise is based on a pair of servers - we're talking about fortune 500s. I'll ignore for a second the fact that $20k/month in server spend for a pair of servers to be database+web is grossly overpriced, even at LIST, which no fortune 500 ever comes close to paying. All of the "and you don't get all these other services" is just a red herring because, again, we're talking about a fortune 500 that isn't bu…

I'm not sure where you're getting $20k/month for on-prem from. The number in my post for on-prem for a pair of servers, which is grossly underestimated, was $1,130/mo, amortized. Still, $1M in servers, over 5 years is $200k/yr, or $16k/month, not including hosting costs for that size of a system. Equinix is the gold standard, but they're what one would call expensive.

Mind throwing out some numbers you think are realistic for "racks at a time"?

Re: The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

#162

Post by pessimizer » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 6:41 PM UTC

yonz wrote: post #139

this_user wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Local First > "Join our Discord"

Yonz here, I run the community and can be blamed for the 20+ swipes at the discord choice. We started in February 2023, and it has been amazing to see the now ~1k developers coming together and building awesome collaborations like Tinybase + Cr-sqlite. Yes, we need a community platform aligned with our mission, but it is already hard enough to get people together. Before the website or the discord, it was just a bunc…

The effectiveness of using Discord for your community is a fact that undermines the community's only purpose. You use Discord as a stepping stone because it works, but if you don't prioritize moving off of it to an effective replacement above any and all more costly efforts and issues, it's hard to believe in the authenticity of purpose.

I'm not implying here that you are not prioritizing moving on (how would I know), or planning to use that movement as an case study to sell local/P2P-first to others, but if you all are not that's going to be a permanent blot.

Re: The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

#163

Post by crazygringo » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 6:53 PM UTC

inconceivable wrote: post #109

crazygringo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. Surely there was a middle ground where prices weren't so low customers didn't think you were running a scam, but weren't so high they became "too expensive for what we offered"? What you're describing doesn't seem to be anything unique to cloud; it's something every business deals with. Figuring out the right market segmentation to deliver cheaper prices to those who are more price-conscious, and more…

> Figuring out the right market segmentation to deliver cheaper prices to those who are more price-conscious, and more functionality to those who can pay. yeah smart guy, that's what we did for over 10 years. then it became impossible (because it's AMZN and MSFT and GOOG, remember???). then i sold. now i never have to worry about that shit ever again.

No need to be snarky/insulting here. It was just that your explanation purely on prices being either too low or too high seems incomplete. It's not clear why there wasn't a middle ground.

On the other hand, not being able to compete against the scale of major cloud providers makes sense. It's just not clear how that's related to you starting out with prices that were too low.

Re: The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

#164

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 7:14 PM UTC

jeanlou wrote: post #81

delfinom wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Very few organizations are able to stay efficient on the long run as they scale Simply using AWS doesn't do anything to help with this in that same long run. Give it a decade or two and those same organizations will suddenly have multiple bureaucratic departments to approve new AWS resources and spending. All AWS is offering is a channel that a bureaucratic process hasn't been developed for _yet_ and the organizatio…

Good luck maintaining your own infra, server, system middle war combo. It's a whole area in itself. Let the specialists do it and focus on your core business. Saying otherwise is just a lack of pragmatism.

[deleted]

Re: The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

#165

Post by hintymad » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 7:15 PM UTC

The cloud may be a prison, but its infra services, specifically EC2+Autoscaling Group, S3, SQS, and DDB, make the cloud a Four-Seasons-like prison. So, what specifically can we do to make local-first at least equality productive for a med-sized company like Uber for at least the following simple (doesn't mean they are easy, though) requirements:

  - Anyone in the company can launch and configure an autoscaled VM cluster. It's surprisingly hard to create a system like EC2, as Uber failed to do so even though they tried, and a number of multi-billion-dollar internet company tried and also failed. 

  - Anyone can store any amount of data and scan them with practically unlimited bandwidth for analytics. In fact, object storages on cloud have been so good that I failed to see a thriving open-source community that actively work on an alternative.

  - A database that just works and can handle a wide range of workload, including seemingly anti-patterns like using database as a large-scale distributed queue. Yes, I'm talking about DDB. 

  - A simple queue that supports competitive consumer pattern and practically scales infinitely. Per Tim Bray, a queue that "is almost perfect" as SQS.

Re: The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

#166

Post by theshrike79 » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 7:16 PM UTC

Agingcoder wrote: post #78

theshrike79 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can literally right now, sitting here in my underwear, spin up 4 clustered servers in 3 different continents with a globally replicated object storage and a master + 2 slaves setup of SQL databases on each location. And all that for less than the price of _one_ competent sysadmin's monthly salary. How would you suggest a company would match that with local servers and sysadmins? One sysadmin per 8 hour shift = 3 pe…

It depends on the size of your company. If it has 200k employees, you can mutualize the salaries of your dbas. There are also intermediate steps between ´build your own dc’ and ´run everything in was’. You will build monitoring tools anyway, and will most likely have sysadmins too if your fleet is large enough etc. Cloud is not always an obvious win, and depends a lot on where you work

At 200k employees and being profitable, you can definitely can start investigating moving to on-prem. And most likely a lot sooner than that.

BUT it depends on what field you're in. If you're managing CCPA/GDPR/HIPAA data it's a huge bureaucracy mess to get everything certified. Cloud operators usually have their documented and certified already, you just need to figure out your own part.

Re: The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

#167

Post by akho » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 7:19 PM UTC

shafyy wrote: post #65

akho wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not dropbox or whatever place you use to share files normally? a screenshot program does not need a cloud.

It's completely optional. And it's very convenient to record a screencast and have it uploaded to the cloud with one click which also copies the share URL to your clipboard at the same time. I don't use Dropbox or a similar service, so this is a real value added for me.

You add yet another account you need to manage, and it's very easy for your private information to be visible in screenshots/casts, in a cloud managed by the makers of a screenshot app.

Re: The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

#168

Post by theshrike79 » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 7:20 PM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #127

theshrike79 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can literally right now, sitting here in my underwear, spin up 4 clustered servers in 3 different continents with a globally replicated object storage and a master + 2 slaves setup of SQL databases on each location. And all that for less than the price of _one_ competent sysadmin's monthly salary. How would you suggest a company would match that with local servers and sysadmins? One sysadmin per 8 hour shift = 3 pe…

If you want to be able to instantly spin up servers collocated you just need to have spare capacity. There is nothing that restricts you from delaying expanding your capacity until you need it. That is what slows you down.

Try going "Hey boss, I need 20k for some servers I'm just going to let sit in their shipping boxes in case we need them later." (or you can install them but not use them for anything).

Come tell me how it went =)

I've yet to see a manager who wants to spend money up front for stuff they might possibly need in the future. YMMV

Re: The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

#169

Post by red-iron-pine » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 7:21 PM UTC

taylodl wrote: post #29

Anyone who's worked inside a large organization knows the cloud is the solution to be able to get things done and deliver value to the business. Why? On-prem solutions require I work with the infrastructure group, who wants to cookie-cutter me into their limited stable of infrastructure options; I have to work with the systems group, who gives me very limited options and configurations for the operating systems; the…

> Anyone who's worked inside a large organization knows the cloud is the solution to be able to get things done and deliver value to the business.

Nah. Multiple F500s to include manufacturing, railroad, and aircraft. Pick an industry, been around it.

3 for 3 -- large cloud rollouts clobbered the IT team and blew OpEx out of the water. Saw VPs catch an axe for it, and at least one CTO get nailed with embezzlement accusations due to a "cloud consulting" company he had ties to, and who managed to get a no-bid contract for north of 400k.

Never been anywhere that it wasn't a kind-of-clusterfuck, and the only answers in reply I've seen were No True Scotsman-type "you're just not embracing the cloud and it's changes to processes bla bla bla".

Re: The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

#170

Post by red-iron-pine » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 7:23 PM UTC

api wrote: post #41

taylodl wrote: post #29

Anyone who's worked inside a large organization knows the cloud is the solution to be able to get things done and deliver value to the business. Why? On-prem solutions require I work with the infrastructure group, who wants to cookie-cutter me into their limited stable of infrastructure options; I have to work with the systems group, who gives me very limited options and configurations for the operating systems; the…

Yeah, in addition to the recurring revenue aspect a major drive of cloud adoption is escaping your IT department. This suggests that the way corporations do IT is radically wrong and actively harmful.

if you think your IT dept is bad, wait until you see how little Amazon or Azure gives a shit