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The future is not self-hosted

drewlyton.com

331–340 of 459 posts

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#332

I honestly would be totally fine with large providers being the ones to host and "own" all my media---_if_ they were obsessive stewards of data quality. To me it seems very reasonable to have these things hosted in central repositories, with large corporate stewards of the creative works, which I can access on any device for a monthly fee. The creators and owners of the works could then upgrade them over time, e.g. t…

This is such an interesting point and a great comment. Thank you!

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#334
post #196

- Post about self hosting and how centralization is bad - Uses a centralised service for VPN: Tailscale Name a more iconic duo

Eh, I can see your point. But Tailscale is a very different kind of centralized. It's just fancy, more convenient Wireguard at the end of the day. If I wanted to move away from it, it's pretty easy. Moving off of something like Google Photos however, was much harder in comparison.

Thanks for reading and commenting!

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#335

Translation: this particular user wants to make different privacy choices than the rest and pretends that we should philosophically follow. All because Big Corp does anti open software/anti privacy thing. Give me a break. These platitudes ring like propaganda. I do what I want with my computer and data. You don't get to choose to "connect with me". > Beyond individualism To authoritarianism. It's fine if the author w…

I think collective, democratic ownership is kind of the opposite of authoritarianism, right haha? But I agree choice is important! Thanks for your comment!

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#336

This article misses the point. The future will be self-hosted (or local community hosted) when automation technology actually matures and shows some real innovations. That's one reason we're building https://github.com/purpleidea/mgmt/

Sounds interesting! Good luck and thanks for reading!

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#338
post #200

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…

You get this wrong. The expensive part isn't the tech at all. You can self-host a lot of things on a old laptop in a drawer while you access it via your routers wireguard VPN connection, without any domain renting.

The expensive part is aquiring the skills needed to pull that off.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#339
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, it is now easier than ever to make copies of materials that we see. Famously, the internet never forgets, and even the smallest mistakes or slip-ups are retained in perpetuity, as long as someone is interested enough in keeping hold of the original copies. And there are a lot of organisations that are very interested in keeping hold of original copies. I would argue that the opposite is true: it is…

This is why I think archive sites will be attacked by the powers that would like information to disappear when they want it to. Perhaps they'll use a warped interpretation of copyright law to do it, or maybe something even more draconian like censorship laws with a punishment for publishing banned information. Could they do it, technically? Not unless they controlled the entire world's networks, including those of co…

I don't think it's possible, though. Or at least, I think it's harder now than ever before. The internet isn't completely decentralised, but it's at least spread out enough that it's seriously difficult to shut down any one part of it, at least without being willing to take some serious authoritarian measures. Look at how difficult it's been for the most influential media companies in the world to fight piracy, for example.

I genuinely think our society is one of the most censorship-resistant societies in history. This comes with its own problems (how do you deal with media that genuinely is harmful, like calls to violence or plots to abuse children?) but I think this is the tradeoff that one has to make when dealing with censorship and liberty. The more you make it difficult for the authorities to shut down good speech, the more difficult it becomes to protect against harmful speech.

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