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The future is not self-hosted

drewlyton.com

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Re: The future is not self-hosted

#211

Post by sgarland »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #75
sgarland wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What we need first is incentive for smart, dedicated, part-time sys-admins to devote time and effort to community hosting. I’d do it for free. I’ve long been frustrated that I have more reliable infrastructure in my homelab than most companies I’ve worked for, and that none of them have any interest in shifting out of the cloud. I don’t see a market for it, though. Most people are generally happy with Google, Apple…

I’d do it for free. And if you get hit by a car? Or worse --- maybe you get married and have kids ? One big reason people *buy* service is sustainability/longevity/redundancy. There are no absolute guarantees but I think most commercial endeavors nowadays would bet on AWS/Google/MS/Apple over "Hosting by Joe and Friends".

I have zero desire to host things commercially, as in for businesses; the point of TFA (at least, as I read it) was community-based, for people.

Also, FWIW I am married and have kids. Hasn’t stopped me from homelabbing.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#212

Post by selfhoster11 »

wmf wrote: post #200
deathanatos wrote: post #162

The author mostly just hand waves away self-hosting. There's an analogy that compares it to suburbia, but unlike the suburbs where you have to drive 40 minutes to get anywhere interesting, … an Internet hosted service is just as accessible , anywhere. It's a vapid analogy. The only substantive argument I can see is that the technology is immature: > Well...without exposing our services to the public internet and forc…

I've thought deeply about this topic but from the pro-suburbia side and I actually agree with the analogy. At a bare minimum if you want to be independent you need a domain which is ~$10/year. That's a small amount but it's already more than most people will pay. (IMO this is irrational if you're paying >$500/year for cellular service but I digress.) Good home servers like Helm (RIP) or Umbrel are $300+ upfront. A go…

I disagree. From experience (see my username), self-hosting is hardly expensive. A $50 ex-corporate SFF with a couple of large M.2 or SATA SSDs will be a lot more powerful and easier to set up and manage than a Raspberry Pi, while not drawing much power. The ongoing costs are larger than not self-hosting, but not terrible - unless you want a symmetric connection, the domain name renewal is the expensive part.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#213

Post by TacticalCoder »

Many in this thread are totally missing the point of self-hosting. It's not "self-hosting and hence not having an Internet connection". It's self-hosting in addition to having the Internet (yeah, no, I didn't post this very message on my self-hosted island: shocker, I know).

> I understand that to some (maybe most) of you, those words meant nothing. That's kind of the point. All of that took 138 words to describe but took me the better part of two weeks to actually do.

I fully understand. I happen to also run a Proxmox server at home. I also installed the "I'm Mich" (immich) photo sharing app on it. I'm also running a Movies/Series/Music streaming service (Plex) (although I haven't containerized that one yet).

Private pastebin is sweet.

Private Git repo is always nice too.

Youtube downloader with a Web UI is convenient.

I run a serious ad-blocking DNS server: but when you self-host a service, it's zero ad by default.

Thing is: machines keep getting more and more powerful, so it only got easier and easier to self-host. Back then self-hosting meant buying huge used servers and put them in a rack. And you can still do that.

But you can also just a NUC and slap Proxmox on it and that'll already get you a long way (usual notice about lack of ECC / need for backups / RAID not being backups / ZFS not being backups etc. apply).

It got simpler to self-host, not harder.

Self-hosting doesn't mean you're a luddite with no Internet access. It just means there are a few services you host yourself. I don't know what's hard to understand about that?

Something has to be said too about what you'll learn in the process of setting all that up.

I understand you may need big corps to help you put your diapers on and feed you your baby bottle "because convenience": I do too.

Just not 100% of the time.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#214

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

waldopat wrote: post #183

Moxie Marlinspike nailed this in his web3 critique from a couple years ago: "People don't want to run their own servers, and never will. The premise for web1 was that everyone on the internet would be both a publisher and consumer of content as well as infrastructure... However – and I don't think this can be emphasized enough – that is not what people want." That said, the discussion seems stuck in a false binary be…

> That said, the discussion seems stuck in a false binary between the control of self-hosting and the convenience of corporate services, but I think what the market wants is a third way that provides both control and convenience.

If I were to run my own version of Google Photos and the like, I'd probably go with the hybrid option:

Run all the software I'd run if I was self-hosting, but in the cloud, possibly with a backup in a second cloud. ie, put my photos in Backblaze B2, with second copies in S3 or something.

Personally, half the reason I use Google Photos is so that if my house burns down, I don't lose my pictures. A self-hosted server running under my desk doesn't carry that guarantee. Backups are off-site for a reason.

Though maybe self-hosted at home with a single cloud backup would be good enough.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#215

Post by veqq »

Aurornis wrote: post #176
voxleone wrote: post #155

Self-hosting isn't just about tech choices — it's about *who controls access to knowledge*. During the Enlightenment, owning a physical copy of a book meant intellectual freedom. You didn’t rent ideas; you had them. Today, most digital knowledge is hosted, locked, or streamed — *leased from platforms*, not owned. We’re in fact drifting into *digital feudalism*, where access to culture, tools, and even history depends…

I personally prefer owning my content, physical books, and having local copies. But if I’m being honest, I think this claim that if you don’t own the book you don’t have the knowledge and society will turn into digital feudalism is hyperbole. Knowledge is proliferating faster than ever, becoming more accessible than ever, and it’s easier than ever before to get the info that you’re searching for, even in this streami…

> from a quick search online

I would have agreed with you a few years ago. But now Google, DuckDuckGo etc. at most provide 3 pages of results, with many irrelevant or wrong. There are alternatives:

https://wiby.me/ https://clew.se/ https://kagi.com/

But that's not the majority experience and more importantly, it shows that it really can be "taken" from us.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#217

Post by nirav72 »

I like self hosting . It’s not just about privacy or owning something. To me a homelab is also a hobby. No different than previous generations that tinkered with their cars as a hobby. As someone who works in IT - there are also ancillary benefits. What I learn at work, I apply to my home lab and vice versa.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#218

Post by lugu »

waldopat wrote: post #183

Moxie Marlinspike nailed this in his web3 critique from a couple years ago: "People don't want to run their own servers, and never will. The premise for web1 was that everyone on the internet would be both a publisher and consumer of content as well as infrastructure... However – and I don't think this can be emphasized enough – that is not what people want." That said, the discussion seems stuck in a false binary be…

I don't agree with the premise that people don't want to be part of the infra. The real problem is that gate keeping is a great business model. It is so profitable to create a wall garden that companies compete ferocely to take care of you content.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#219

Post by wwwtyro »

voxleone wrote: post #155

Self-hosting isn't just about tech choices — it's about *who controls access to knowledge*. During the Enlightenment, owning a physical copy of a book meant intellectual freedom. You didn’t rent ideas; you had them. Today, most digital knowledge is hosted, locked, or streamed — *leased from platforms*, not owned. We’re in fact drifting into *digital feudalism*, where access to culture, tools, and even history depends…

I'm not sure. It seems like the harder they squeeze, the less they can hold onto. Books, movies, TV shows, audiobooks, music - you can find it all online for free and acquire it pretty safely (torrents/vpn etc). I think the only thing they can really sell us is convenience - and I buy it! But if that convenience is lost to fragmentation, or lack of offline availability (e.g., books), or price, I think people will stop paying and do the more convenient thing. There's a tension there that I don't think they can ignore.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#220

Post by movedx »

whilenot-dev wrote: post #210
bee_rider wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blog post talks about our self-hosting movies, photos, and podcasts, in nice Netflix-like interfaces. Sharing photos. That sort of thing. You are talking about preserving intellectual independence. Both are nice to have, but they are sort of different problems, right? Yours seems more important. And yours could probably be solved by a local copy of Wikipedia and an FTP server full of digital textbooks. IMO one da…

> one dangerous misstep we can make with self-hosting is to assume we need to start by matching the centralized services look-and-feel and polish That's an interesting take. I think matching these services isn't a necessity, but getting a polished look-and-feels just helps adoption. Adoption isn't an exclusive scenario and everyone is free to choose and mix how they see fit. My private collection won't ever compete w…

> includes stuff that documents my own individual history.

By this do you mean family photos and the like? I'd like to hear more about this. I'm building up a personal library like this too.

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