The future is not self-hosted

Post by drew_lytle » Sat, Jul 26, 2025, 11:30 AM UTC

rel_ic wrote: post #193

nine_k wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come that a public library , one of the earliest examples of centralized information infrastructure, is not an example of outsourcing and relinquishing control? Instead of your own (small) books collection you get to use some external (huge) book collection. But now you only can borrow a physical book, or some recorded media. You have to return it, and making a copy for personal use only is still a bit problemati…

> Either you own and control something, or you do not, there's no third option. I think there's a full spectrum you're missing. You can own something with other people, and your level of control can be continuous, not discrete & binary. For example, my public library is funded by my local government, which I can influence with lobbying and voting. I can join the board of the library, and I can just go and talk to the…

Post by drew_lytle » Sat, Jul 26, 2025, 11:32 AM UTC

wobfan wrote: post #281

What. The article reads just as an ad for clouds. It tips into the benefits, ownership problems, setup. Then it says "but how do I share photos???" and this apparently is enough to counter all benefits. Even if I had to (and this is what I actually do actively) push the photos I want to share to Google Photos, ALL the benefits remain. I see it, it's a slight inconvenience of having to do like 2 more taps and wait for…

Post by drew_lytle » Sat, Jul 26, 2025, 11:37 AM UTC

dmje wrote: post #262

I’m never clear why the solution I have - a kind of hybrid of cloud and local - isn’t more popular. I make use of google drive, apps and google photos and therefore suffer the knowledge that my stuff is probably being used to train AI (I’m personally comfortable with this) - but then I have local backups and sync for everything. InsycHQ gives me a locally (and NAS) backed up version of all my documents, I also backup…

Post by drew_lytle » Sat, Jul 26, 2025, 11:40 AM UTC

ndriscoll wrote: post #173

drew_lytle wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Self hosting and community collaboration need to be incompatible. Totally agree, but there's a lot more nuance here. Giving each friend an account on my server would require it be exposed to the public internet which is difficult to manage securely. And SSO doesn't really make this very convenient because that means everyone would have to sign in and sync to everyone's servers which is a lot of work for the user. I…

Right, the services should allow federation, but that doesn't mean you need to federate with the entire world . You and your friend should be able to just click "invite" in your "My Home" app to get a link to text to each other like `myhome://invite?domain= .services.frienddomain.com` (or a QR code flow). Under that TLD you have well-known subdomains and TXT records for e.g. wireguard config, oauth server location, e…

Post by drew_lytle » Sat, Jul 26, 2025, 11:41 AM UTC

_V_ wrote: post #277

Future is, unfortunately, probably getting back to piracy in some shape or form. Especially with the general idea of the industry that buying something does not mean you own it. In that case all I can say is: F'em. It is definitely true that piracy is primarily a service problem, not an ethical one.