Live data from Hacker News

Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

den.dev

121–130 of 270 posts

Re: Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

#121
So this is a blog stating to be an owner and not a renter, and then proceeds to talk about how to rent hosting.. Sorry, but if it's not your hardware, on your property, then you're renting.

Regulations have been waay too lose on, especially, american ISPs where I understand they are allowed to not only refuse you a public routable IP but also dictate what kind of traffic you're allowed to send and receive (for example, whether the traffic flowing is of "commercial" character and therefore should be on on a different subscription), this insanity should be illegal. Internet is a utility, and everyone should have the right to the same type of access, regardless of their need (those who do not need/want, can simply chose not to use it, but ISPs should not be allowed to differentiate).

I've hosted my own web, and other servers on my own hardware since I was 13 years old, when I bought my first domain, I had to use a fax machine for the first time in my life, and fax my request form, along with my passport, to the agency responsible for the top level domain of my country. It was kind of convoluted back then, but everyone were helpful, and it was not that difficult, the technology was well understood, supporters were competent, and it was expected that people were going to use the internet for internet things. Today is my 39th birthday, and while the server hosting my stuff is mostly still located 3 meters from me, the path to having it online has nothing but degenerated, it's an uphill battle just to be on the internet these days.. The mail stuff is the easier part (dkim, dmarc, spf, certificates).. But the simple act of getting your f..king computer connected to the f..king internet like it was 1999, that's the real hassle.. ISP NAT, supporters beyond incompetent, blocked ports, missing (or unknown) relay hosts.. It's a joke.

Re: Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

#122
this should be standard for every human being not just techies

the LOE to self hosting and adding infra on demand should also be push button easy

the good news is that it seems to get easier and cheaper as time passes, which makes it feel inevitable but obstacles remain because of corporate business interests of course

Re: Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

#123
post #102
post #44

> Exploiting user-generated content. You know, if I've noticed anything in the past couple years, it's that even if you self-host your own site, it's still going to get hoovered up and used/exploited by things like AI training bots. I think between everyone's code getting trained on, even if it's AGPLv3 or something similarly restrictive, and generally everything public on the internet getting "trained" and "transfor…

Part of me viscerally agrees because large corporations have monetized UGC. Another part of me though thinks differently. We are a species that builds knowledge from generation to generation. From one person to another. Over years, over centuries. Philosophically this part tends to think that your thoughts and ideas belong to humanity and thus need to be shared with all of us.

If you recall high school history, rapid, exponential "progress" happened once the knowledge was 1) written down (printing press) 2) archived for the future (libraries) 3) systematized (textbook/encyclopaedia) 4) proactively shared (public education), all on a massive scale.

The fact that some knowledge exists and is even accessible does not really matter if takes a highly trained in a very narrow field scholar to find that piece of information. You need a well established knowledge creation and distribution funnel in operation for humanity as a whole to reap the benefits of knowledge.

There is undoubtedly a lot of useful knowledge on internet platforms, however, most of that knowledge remains unsystematized and largely undiscoverable, meaning that contribution to the totality of human knowledge by these platforms is infinitesimal, which is further drowned by cat and porn videos.

Re: Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

#124

Oh what a delight, the cartoon animal character in the infoboxes is “Krteček” [0], a popular (and quite old) character from my country. The website says that the guy is from Washington, but his name does sound vaguely Slavic. Interesting. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Mole

Delimarsky sounds more than just a bit Czech/Slovak :)

Re: Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

#125
post #51
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing to disagree in this statement, for sure. If it's on the open internet, it will almost surely be used for AI training, consent be damned. But it feels like even at a rudimentary level, if I post a picture on my site that is then used by a large publisher for ads, I would (at least in theory) have some recourse to pursue the matter and prevent them from using my content. In contrast, if I uploaded something to…

> Meta "sublicensed" my image to someone else, I wouldn't have much to say there. but you agreed to this, when agreeing to the TOS. > I post a picture on my site that is then used by a large publisher for ads, I would (at least in theory) have some recourse which you didn't sign any contract, and therefore it is a violation of copyright. But the new AI training methods are currently, at least imho, not a violation of…

>But the new AI training methods are currently, at least imho, not a violation of copyright - not any more than a human eye viewing it (which you've implicitly given permission to do so, by putting it up on the internet).

I don't understand how that matters. I thought that the whole idea of copyright and licences was that the holder of the rights can decide what is ok to do with the content and what is not. If the holder of the rights does not agree to a certain kind of use, what else is there to discuss?

It sure does not matter if I think that downloading a torrent is not any more pirating than borrowing a media from my friend.

Re: Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

#126
post #44

> Exploiting user-generated content. You know, if I've noticed anything in the past couple years, it's that even if you self-host your own site, it's still going to get hoovered up and used/exploited by things like AI training bots. I think between everyone's code getting trained on, even if it's AGPLv3 or something similarly restrictive, and generally everything public on the internet getting "trained" and "transfor…

> used/exploited by things like AI training bots How is this worse than a human reading your blog/code, remembering the key parts of it, and creating something transformative from it?

Scale makes all the difference in the world.

Re: Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

#127
post #121

So this is a blog stating to be an owner and not a renter, and then proceeds to talk about how to rent hosting.. Sorry, but if it's not your hardware, on your property, then you're renting. Regulations have been waay too lose on, especially, american ISPs where I understand they are allowed to not only refuse you a public routable IP but also dictate what kind of traffic you're allowed to send and receive (for exampl…

I started to self host my own personal website last year and found it relatively easy. I may have been somewhat lucky with my ISP and that I was already paying for a static IP but the hardest part was setting up cloudflare to mask my IP (and learning how to setup a Linux VM from scratch).

Re: Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

#128
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, if I've noticed anything in the past couple years, it's that even if you self-host your own site, it's still going to get hoovered up and used/exploited by things like AI training bots. So? What do I care? If some stuff I posted to my website (with no requirement for attribution or remuneration, and also no guarantee that the information is true or valid) can improve the AI services that I use, great.

Wouldn't you feel just a little bad if you worked really hard on something, gave it out for free in the spirit of sharing, and someone came along and said thanks, loser , and sold it for money? Would you want to go on making it for free for them to sell?

No, not really? If others can get my stuff for free, then that means that whoever sells it for money must have done something to make it worth money. So they've earned it.

Re: Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

#130
post #121

So this is a blog stating to be an owner and not a renter, and then proceeds to talk about how to rent hosting.. Sorry, but if it's not your hardware, on your property, then you're renting. Regulations have been waay too lose on, especially, american ISPs where I understand they are allowed to not only refuse you a public routable IP but also dictate what kind of traffic you're allowed to send and receive (for exampl…

I generally agree with the sentiment (and yes, internet should be treated as an utility). However, the reality is that the vast majority of people will not be able to self-host on their own hardware for a myriad of reasons (lack of skill, lack of money, lack of interest, etc.) That's not a reason to gatekeep them from having their own corner and claim it as theirs.

If you have a domain and your own site, even hosted on a colocated rack or in the cloud, you're already miles ahead of those that don't. And if you have a domain and can manage DNS records, then in the future that doesn't preclude you from "graduating" to your own hardware, if you so desire. The goal here is more or less self-sufficiency with web properties rather than a pure interpretation of "rent" vs. "own." Because at some point you have to rent something from someone (say, you're not running your own domain registry and registrar).

Post reply on HN