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The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

robertmao.com

71–80 of 205 posts

Re: The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

#71
post #67

While I really want to agree with this, it's giving "You can trivially set up an SFTP server..." I really wish this was as easy as talking about it is.

I suppose technically it is not wrong. The minimalist setup is easy, but it also won't work ( and you will be likely treated as spam ).

Re: The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

#72
I'm optimistic about self-hosting/self sovereignty (which both fall under the umbrella of what I call indie hosting) long term.

But I think both of these articles gloss over the fact that end-to-end encryption has never been shown to work in a real system with normal people. Key management is a completely unsolved problem.

If you don't have e2ee, with current tooling most people will need someone they trust to run their server. But then you run into a privacy paradox: most people have more content they would rather have google looking at/training on than someone close to them looking at, than the other way around.

Personally I think the next step forward is improving software to be more turnkey so everyone can run their own as a GUI app on an old laptop or phone.

That said, we definitely need protocols for sharing stuff.

Re: The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

#73
post #72

I'm optimistic about self-hosting/self sovereignty (which both fall under the umbrella of what I call indie hosting) long term. But I think both of these articles gloss over the fact that end-to-end encryption has never been shown to work in a real system with normal people. Key management is a completely unsolved problem. If you don't have e2ee, with current tooling most people will need someone they trust to run th…

> end-to-end encryption has never been shown to work in a real system with normal people

I would argue that Signal is a great example of this working quite well, and tons of normal people use Signal. It's no more frictional than WhatsApp.

Re: The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

#74
post #59

Deeply disagree. Looking at the current selfhosted landscape and saying "nice but nobody will want to do this" is like looking around in 1970 and saying "nobody will want to own computers, you just rent them for tasks". I say this after copious amounts of invested time over a timespan of 15 years to selfhost. The software landscape changed immensely. Especially now with AI, the software output and ability to learn is…

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I would hesitate before entrusting that kind of hardware to an AI agent. It is an interesting idea, but what if it decides full format is necessary? In my personal anecdata of where AI went wrong, at least I was the human in the middle to stop the bad decision. At best, you end up with a Simpson level nuclear plant terminal, where Homer is just trained to press Y each time it sees a prompt.

I guess what I am saying is: some LLM integration may be worthwhile.

Separately, on a more serious note, what makes this offer that different from its competition?

Re: The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

#75
> (Disclaimer: This blog post was drafted with the help of a language model, but all opinions expressed are my own.)

This is when I head to an LLM to summarize the key take-aways. If you can't be bothered to write it, I can't be bothered to read it. That said, I certainly agree with the summary! :P

Re: The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

#76
post #64

Deeply disagree. Looking at the current selfhosted landscape and saying "nice but nobody will want to do this" is like looking around in 1970 and saying "nobody will want to own computers, you just rent them for tasks". I say this after copious amounts of invested time over a timespan of 15 years to selfhost. The software landscape changed immensely. Especially now with AI, the software output and ability to learn is…

> "nobody will want to own computers, you just rent them for tasks" Very prescient indeed for someone in 1970 to predict the success of AWS

We had timesharing on mainframes. Everything old is new again.

Re: The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

#77
post #72

I'm optimistic about self-hosting/self sovereignty (which both fall under the umbrella of what I call indie hosting) long term. But I think both of these articles gloss over the fact that end-to-end encryption has never been shown to work in a real system with normal people. Key management is a completely unsolved problem. If you don't have e2ee, with current tooling most people will need someone they trust to run th…

These are all solved problems depending on what someone is after.

Tools like tailscale/headscale combined with proxmox give most people point and click self hosting close to using a digital ocean droplet (which should never be used in production).

Re: The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> each of us should self-host their stuff when we could perfectly well just share one machine? Actually yes. The golden rule of selfhosting is that you don't host for others. Then you are just hosting, with all the annoyance that comes with it. Also I might have different needs than my siblings, different software, settings and so on. Extreme example: police warrant for a sibling, and they take the family server away…

Now you lost me. Expecting one server per person in a household is unrealistic. Even if software becomes perfect, what about the hardware aspect? Expecting a family of 5 to have 5 servers all available and reachable from anywhere sounds like a nightmare, and just a waste of electricity. Your whole premise is that self hosting software can become a one-click deploy, if they can achieve that I'm sure different settings…

A server could be a $30 silent soap-sized box hanging on the router consuming 5 watts, you plug it in and it sets up services and domains ready to access. Why would this be a nightmare? It is already feasible on all levels. Assuming the house has fiber, reliability shouldn't be much of an issue.

Re: The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

#79

> (Disclaimer: This blog post was drafted with the help of a language model, but all opinions expressed are my own.) This is when I head to an LLM to summarize the key take-aways. If you can't be bothered to write it, I can't be bothered to read it. That said, I certainly agree with the summary! :P

It all comes down to the information content :)

Re: The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign

#80
post #64

Deeply disagree. Looking at the current selfhosted landscape and saying "nice but nobody will want to do this" is like looking around in 1970 and saying "nobody will want to own computers, you just rent them for tasks". I say this after copious amounts of invested time over a timespan of 15 years to selfhost. The software landscape changed immensely. Especially now with AI, the software output and ability to learn is…

> "nobody will want to own computers, you just rent them for tasks" Very prescient indeed for someone in 1970 to predict the success of AWS

That's how computers were before the rise of personal computers
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