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The future is not self-hosted

drewlyton.com

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Re: The future is not self-hosted

#51

Post by garciasn »

slightwinder wrote: post #16
bix6 wrote: post #5

I don’t think most people realize how much they’ve given up. Unfortunately it’s a fair bit of work to reclaim everything as your story shows. I switched to my own modem and router recently for privacy from my ISP and it was a fantastic experience / worth it but it cost some money and time which can be hard to find.

> I don’t think most people realize how much they’ve given up. I think many are overstating how much people are giving up. People exchange control for comfort, but most people never had any need or ability for this control in the first place. That's why cloud-services became popular, and remain popular. > Unfortunately it’s a fair bit of work to reclaim everything as your story shows. This work would be necessary any…

> People exchange control for comfort, but most people never had any need or ability for this control in the first place. That's why cloud-services became popular, and remain popular.

I can--and did for the better part of ~15 years--run and maintain my own self-hosted everything (hardware, DNS, SMTP, httpd, etc, etc, etc). Then I got married and had kids and went to grad school and had a demanding job where I was doing many of the same things I did at home.

I just fucking don't have the personal time nor desire to manage that shit any longer. Why? Because I have better things to do w/my free time than fuck around with my homelab (or whatever the in-term is these days). When I'm done with work, I just want to go outside or read a book.

I am VERY WELL AWARE of the risks and privacy implications; but, my actual freedom from the day-to-day is worth far more to me at this point in my life.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#53

Post by slightwinder »

kbody wrote: post #37

There have been solid efforts with niche adoption that have quite nice UX like Umbrel [1] that allows installing all the mentioned and a ton more open-source apps [2] just by using a UI. It was spawned as bitcoin node hardware+software combo but expanded and is now primarily about self-hosting. The rise of better home internet connections worldwide will make this even more attainable for more people. At least on my l…

There are many solutions like Umbrel, but they all suffer from limited amount of apps, and depending on someone maintaining them. You basically have to choose them by which apps you want to use, and how that it will get maintained long enough.

What we need is something more universal, like a more userfriendly docker, or something like flatpak+hub for server-apps.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#54

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

palata wrote: post #40
theamk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This still exists... OsmAnd, offline map app for Android, has 10M+ downloads. Maps.me has 50M+ downloads. Sure, that's not 10B+ of Google Maps users, but still a lot of users. I don't think the "advanced users" market has shrunk much, it's just the whole pie became so much bigger that the overall ratio decreased.

Isn't Organic Maps the open source successor of Maps.me?

And CoMaps the successor of Organic

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#55

Post by cryptonym »

albus0x wrote: post #44
MoreQARespect wrote: post #9

Self hosting reminds me of the world of smartphones just before the advent of the iPhone. Using a phone as a mini computer was possible. Downloading and using apps happened. I even used offline maps. It was still the preserve of nerds while regular people "couldn't understand why you'd use a phone to do anything other than text and call". SUDDENLY once it became seamless and trivial to set everything and it was all b…

I think there is an effort being made for this. Some folks have created https://selfprivacy.org/ and continuously developing it. I follow this project by heart

The very first thing they show on the website is a list of cloud providers.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#56

Post by rightbyte »

stego-tech wrote: post #47

The author gets into a few issues I’ve talked at length about on my own blogs over the years, with the same gist: self-hosting is a better alternative than corporate cloud providers, but isn’t suitable for the everyman due to its complexity and associated costs. The grim reality is that most people and businesses still have such disdain for their own privacy, security, and/or sovereignty, and that’s not going to chan…

> but isn’t suitable for the everyman due to its complexity and associated costs.

Complexity, sure. But for most people, the cost of Netflix, Spotify and whatever will quickly add up to a 500usd server. With 1-10 users you don't need much.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#57

Post by will5421 »

Could the friends access the server through the VPN?

> It's secured behind our own VPN.

> So, how do I create a shared photo album with my friends where we can all upload pictures from our latest trip? Well...since our friends can't access our server

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#59

Post by chneu »

stego-tech wrote: post #47

The author gets into a few issues I’ve talked at length about on my own blogs over the years, with the same gist: self-hosting is a better alternative than corporate cloud providers, but isn’t suitable for the everyman due to its complexity and associated costs. The grim reality is that most people and businesses still have such disdain for their own privacy, security, and/or sovereignty, and that’s not going to chan…

Docker has basically solved the deployment issue.

For 9 out of 10 self hosted programs you can have them up in ~5 minutes with a docker compose and env file.

There are whole OSes built around it, like casaOS which gives users a neat front end/dashboard for their self hosted stuff.

Also for cost eh idk. For $300 you can have enough hardware and storage to self host everything, even a Google photos alternative. Most people spend much more than that on subscriptions for storage, streaming, etc. I guess a UPS is necessary and adds a bit of cost. There are also plenty of pre-built kits for this.

I do agree that it isn't for everyone. Its finicky to get just right and security can be very annoying. Security is already a crapshoot though so I'm not sure that's necessarily a ding for self-hosted.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#60

Post by otter-in-a-suit »

kreco wrote: post #30

I strongly agree with the global sentiment. If you can't actually download a copy of a digital content as a mere file, then you can't really host it and serve it. You can't host your own Spotify-clone even if you are allowed to listen to songs. However, you can still download music on Bandcamp to feed your Spotify-clone. You can't host your own your own digital Video Game Store usually because of various DRM, or beca…

Exactly. It's a great article, but the depressing part is that there's a very limited catalog of legal media available to use these services with (except for immich, I suppose).

For games, there's GOG. Good luck finding bigger releases.

For music, there's Bandcamp and CDs and vinyl. Fortunately, most albums still release on either one of these.

Audiobookshelf can be used for most podcasts (some do not have a traditional RSS feed and are in some walled garden) and some audio books are available DRM free, but tons of books are Audible exclusives. I'm relatively sure that they also stop authors from publishing e.g. on Royal Road once they're on there.

The same is true for e-books - HumbleBundle and co are great, but good luck finding certain titles. I regret buying a new Kindle, but at least had the foresight to download all my books before they stopped allowing that. Physical books are an option, but that's not an equivalent to en e-book.

I stopped caring about TV shows and movies a long time ago (largely due to the atrocious streaming fragmentation, pricing, and the sheer audacity to include ads in paid plans), but I assume 95% of all shows are exclusive to some streaming giant, too.

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