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

robertmao.com

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

#81

Post by poisonborz »

em-bee wrote: post #68
poisonborz wrote: post #63

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…

it's not technical infeasibility, it's lack of personal capacity, either skill or time wise. some people simply can't do that, so if i want them to share things with me i have to make it easy for them. the alternative is facebook (or something else like it). and i am not talking about hosing for your own private use but for shared use. family photos for example, chats, other family stuff. there isn't going to be a wa…

> it's lack of personal capacity, either skill or time wise. some people simply can't do that

That's just an usability issue that needs to be solved. In 2002 nobody could believe that even elderly and children could use smartphones 20 years later.

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

#82

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 »

poisonborz wrote: post #23
GianFabien wrote: post #5

The majority of folks are consumers and unable and/or unwilling to handle the complexity of self-hosting, self-sovereignity, etc. They will gravitate to what is free and easy . There are no incentives for the major vendors to implement protocols that will threaten their massive advertising revenues. If you decide to foster an online community , then you might end up being the tech support to that community. For many…

> There are no incentives for the major vendors to implement protocols that will threaten their massive advertising revenues. In 1996 there were especially no incentives from corporations for a free operating system to exists, yet Linux was born on the back of a few hard working engineers and the whole industry catched up, it created a lot (if not the majority) of business. You can engineer ~free and easy self-hostin…

The weird thing is, LLMs do seem to create an environment, in which such shift is not impossible. By this I mean, I know I personally use search engines a lot less now ( and I suspect that here I am not that much different from other internet denizens ). If true, there is a possibility that the existing ad model will -- out of necessity -- have to adapt to a new venue. This did not seem to fully happen yet ( providers seem skittish and are trying not to alienate people ).

I self-host some parts and I am currently in the process of adding some LLM layers in my setup. It seems like it can be made very personal..if one is so inclined. The question remains whether people will be inconvenienced enough.

That I have no real answer for since I am not sure what enough here is. I wince when I see hulu ad on Disney+ platform when I have their no ads tier, but did not drop them yet.

It is not a perfect example, but lots people see it as: 'its not that bad yet'.

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

#83

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #61
kindkang2024 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have created nanotimestamps which basically allow you to embed a lot of data into blockchain itself with basically 0 gas fees. How is this possible? Is it something that EVM-based chains can support? Curious to hear more. > Regarding zk human proves, there are some zkmail Zkmail doesn’t prove that you’re a unique human. Worldcoin does, but it requires trusting a single company with everyone’s iris data, which is…

Its really complicated but I will try to sum it up. Basically nano cryptocurrency has no gas fees so if you can get even 10^-30 nano, you can technically do unlimited transactions forever (there is some caveat) You can get such nano from faucets and then you have basically an eternal source of doing transactions. What are transactions? Transactions are a way of sending money from A public key to B public key Now what…

This does sound interesting and very much show HN level. Do you have any shareable github/page where you discuss the idea in more detail?

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

#84

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 »

AstralStorm wrote: post #50
nirui wrote: post #32

> We don’t need more “alternatives” to the cloud. We need a shift in architecture—from platform-centric to protocol-centric systems. Nice idea, but that alone is not enough. The POP3/SMTP protocol is still a server-client based model, and such model naturally gravitates towards centralized systems which leads to the problem we're facing today. In my opinion, to encourage self-sovereignty, a protocol should decouple t…

These protocols exist, e.g. on top of I2P network. Thing is, nobody has any incentive to back them.

And worse, given how they work, there is a disincentive to use them ( especially so in US jurisdiction ).

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

#85

Post by grepfru_it »

poisonborz wrote: post #78
monsieurbanana wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A server could be a VM taps head

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

#86

Post by ants_everywhere »

> There is no shared protocol for identity, no agreed standard for portable, user-owned data, no common infrastructure for composable interaction.

I've heard this idea in several forms, and it's not what I think most people want.

I don't want to live in a world where everything is trackable to a stable identity. Since the stable identity is ultimately trackable to your socual security number, this is essentially a world in which all of your online activity is trackable to your SSN.

You can see why this is valuable to some people. And if you want to monetize everyone's data it's an important first step.

But it's firmly in the authoritarian camp where everyone is monitored and tracked. And that I think is still contrary to how most people want to live their life.

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

#87

Post by ants_everywhere »

NoraCodes wrote: post #73
apitman wrote: 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.

Signal has a lot of problems with changing devices while preserving history. As in it's often just impossible.

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

#88

Post by Retr0id »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #80
Retr0id wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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

That was GP's point, it's just also how things are today.

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

#89

Post by xp84 »

grepfru_it wrote: post #85
poisonborz wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A server could be a VM taps head

“Hello, Metropolitan Police here. We have a warrant to seize… docker container ab38asdf8765jk on your home server. Go ahead and export its attached volumes and the image. We’ll wait.”

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

#90

Post by xp84 »

em-bee wrote: post #70
monsieurbanana wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

if the servers are all in the same house then the police is not going to ask who's server they can take, they are just going to take all of them. so if that is a concern, it would be lost. but GP is not talking about people living together, but not sharing with relatives who live elsewhere.

Yeah, this makes intuitive sense too. You share lots of that potential IRL liability with live-in family members anyway.
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