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The future is not self-hosted

drewlyton.com

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Re: The future is not self-hosted

#91

Post by mystraline »

crashabr wrote: post #38
mystraline wrote: post #10

That all depends if you're willing to run stuff yourself, or be subservient on the good will of companies not to enshittify (pro-tip, they always will). I self-host the following: Video: Jellyfin Audio: Navidrome Audiobooks: Audiobookshelf Phone image sharing: Immich Home automation: Homeassistant Office suite: NextCloud Monitoring: LibreNMS Compute: Proxmox AI/LLM local: open-webui

What kind of machine do you need to run all of this concurrently?

I bought a dell server from a refurb dealer. 40 core, 128GB ram, 48TB storage, rack sliders. For $1000.

It handles all but the AI/LLM. I have a throwaway box with 32GB ram and cores with a nvidia 2080 that does the LLM side of things.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#92

Post by EGreg »

radlad wrote: post #19
EGreg wrote: post #7

This is exactly what I’ve been building for a decade, but it’s not just a “community hosted cloud platform”, it is an entire reimagining of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, Telegram and all the other community platforms, for an open source world. Here is an overview of how the payments work: https://qbix.com/ecosystem And here is the software you can try for yourself over a weekend: https://github.com/Qbix If any…

> And I don’t remember any story of them ever doing it even for the NSA. Do you? Is this meant to be tongue in cheek?

No, I am serious.

Do you have links to stories of AWS breaking into EC2 instances to eg read RAM for data that is encrypted at rest?

And even if they do, this would present an issue for privacy, but the protocols would still enforce their own permissions (eg no custom amazon DRM for books).

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#94

Post by drew_lytle »

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…

Yeah, at one point in writing this article I had a brief aside about more "off-the-shelf", accessible solutions to self-hosting like Synology. But I cut it because I honestly don't think they make the process that much easier. They help with hardware, but the software setup I think is still pretty difficult. Thanks for reading!

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#95

Post by drew_lytle »

hermitcrab wrote: post #12

There has been a big move to web based apps (SAAS) as web-based software has improved. The biggest plus to web based software for the user is that there is no need to install anything. BUT , you are going to be paying a monthly sub as long as you keep using the service. And soon as the service goes down (due to financial or other reasons) - game over man. So there is still a lot to be said for downloadable software,…

Yes! And I think this way of building software is having a come-back with the local-first movement! https://lofi.so/

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#96

Post by nirui »

> Imagine a world where your library card includes 100GB of encrypted file storage, photo-sharing and document collaboration tools, and media streaming services — all for free.

But why should a (public) library be interested in providing such services? For funding? What about costs? On for example censorship/regulations/compliance/maintenance etc?

I'm not so sure a publicly funded library would have any interest in doing that. Think about it, if libraries can/welling to do any of that, then Amazon would never have any chance to grow this big.

I think that's why only private companies is capable of doing it, at least currently. They found out a way to make a profit while operating a sustainable (all things considered) cloud service.

In fact, the at-cost service provided by the libraries will probably collapse as soon as a for-profit company comes up with a cheaper plan.

Also, host by a library still creates centralized service, which comes with all problems that a centralized service inherits. It only shifts the problem, not solving it.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#97

Post by drew_lytle »

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.

Interesting! I'm planning on running PiHole in the near future to block ads at the network level. Excited for some more, "It was DNS" moments.

To the point about people not knowing how much they've given up, I think another way to phrase this is that people don't know how much has been taken away from them. This is why we need better consumer protections for internet services.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#98

Post by subarctic »

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…

Ok it may be just as painful and non-mainstream to self host these days as the pre-iphone or pre-blackberry smartphones were, and i can imagine that it could get easier in the future, but still what's the point of selfhosting for regular people when the cloud exists? Having a calendar, email/chat apps, webbrowser, maps+gps and everything else in your pocket was a major convenience improvement, but i don't see a benefit like that from self hosting. I only see better privacy, more control and ownership over your data, and in some cases lower cost (but often higher), and those aren't nearly as powerful motivators for people.

I could imagine self hosting becoming more accessible but don't see how it could become mainstream when it's just an alternative to stuff that's already available in the cloud

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#99

Post by drew_lytle »

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…

Thanks for reading and for the kinds words! Would love to read more about the USPS concept and couldn't agree more about the UX gap.

Lets connect! Send me an email – hn@drewlyton.com!

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#100

Post by willquack »

Am I crazy or did my 2006 iMac come with a home media server for serving movies / tv shows / music photos from your filesystem. I think it even came with a slick looking remote!

You could stream content from it over your home network (as long as you were connecting from another Apple device)

Is this lost technology or just a figment of my imagination? I've long since switched to linux and run the typical Jellyfin setup etc

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