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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

#171

Post by t-writescode »

kamranjon wrote: post #165
t-writescode wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, to be clear, you’re upset by their transparency that they used LLMs while plenty of other writers use it to: * brainstorm * reword hard sections they garbage’d out on accident * catch typos / formatting / flow issues But only because they chose strong transparency about their activity?

The disclaimer said the article was drafted with the help of an LLM - if they just did the list of things you mentioned I wouldn’t think they would need to put up a disclaimer (you don’t see disclaimers saying this article was written with the help of Google or Wikipedia) - the fundamental issue I think is that they are letting the LLM actually write the article, which I think people know, pretty viscerally, that the…

Alternatively, they could be very, very conscious of being hyper-honest. There is a huge amount of overlap between people with a “strong sense of justice” (and honesty about using controversial technologies could be covered in that), and people on this forum.

You might not think that’s sufficient for a disclaimer; but if I was worried about AI use and wanted to be super duper up front, I would put that on my own journal if I used it for the things I mentioned.

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

#172

Post by majormajor »

Retr0id wrote: post #64
poisonborz wrote: post #19

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

It's right for business (partially - how are the business employees managing AWS?), wrong for personal use.

Nobody's renting their phone on a task-by-task basis, they're staring at a personal computer for hours a day in their leisure time by choice.

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

#173

Post by QuadmasterXLII »

manquer wrote: post #169
hdgvhicv wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can change a colo location in minutes if it’s virtual or a couple of days if it’s a rack of equipment. I can change my transit provider too. Supermicro seem to have supply problems right now, but dell don’t. If you tie yourself into amazon specific tooling you are dependent on one company.

We are tied to ASML and TSMC and to an extent to the likes of NVIDIA . As cost of innovation in the industry soars, you are bound to end up with a monopoly or at best an oligopoly who will collude. Competitors get acquired or fully fail when their research is not successful . It is just as true in pharma and healthcare. Like it or not in tech we are stuck with no real choice.

There’s a difference between dependencies beeded for growth and dependencies needed for continued operations. I can still watch my dvds, but every streaming operator that does sales happily takes away digital movies I “bought”

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

#174

Post by Liftyee »

As expected based on the opening disclaimer, I'm noticing a lot of LLM "fluff" in this writing. Louis Rossmann made me aware of the "It's not ABC, it's DEF with XYZ" pattern. Also arguably overuse of the tricolons (groups of 3 things) with overlapping/redundant meanings.

I have no issue with literary devices when used thoughtfully, but thought is exactly what LLMs lack.

Makes me wonder if one day we'll need LLMs to compress this kind of writing again. Like purposefully decreasing the signal to noise ratio for transmission, then distilling it down at the receiving end.

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

#175

Post by apitman »

Arathorn wrote: post #162
apitman wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried to adopt Matrix multiple times over years. IMO the UX is evidence that e2ee is not solved.

we solved it in element x, but there appears to be massive inertia towards adopting it because it doesn’t have threads or spaces yet.

If I only use 1 device for 5 years, then lose it, how do I recover?

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

#177

Post by btbuildem »

Authors of both articles (OP's and the one it's responding to) seem to have the answer, put it in their mouths, turn it around with their tongues, and spit it back out, not recognizing it as the obvious way forward: self-hosting was how the internet started. It was the good old days. Now that we are all dancing puppets in the attention attrition economy, the answer is still the same: independence through concrete means. This means being able to tell some service provider to fuck off all the way to the top of Fuck Off Mountain, to swap out A for B, to connect to X, Y and Z, etc. On my own website, I can say whatever I want, and there's absolutely fuck-all you can do about it. You don't like it? You can leave.

Sure, the walled gardens of social media have conditioned new generations to twitch in unison, crave likes and spill rage via comments -- but is that something we want to sustain? I'd deprive that of oxygen and watch it wither. Give me ACTUAL connections, with the people I care about. The shimmering flickering scrolling dopamine drip gets in the way of real connection.

I think the idea of some kind of a distributed, persistent identity is a terrible spectre. Given how much power the incumbents have, if any kind of distributed identity authority actually took root, they would either clone their own and smother the original, or adopt it outright -- with the terrifying consequences of now being able to control your online presence everywhere, and tied to your actual offline identity. This would mean they could exact suffering on you everywhere (not just online) for whatever actions of yours they deem to be transgressions in their own little worlds.

No, the future IS self-hosted. Whether the "self" is an individual, a group, a community -- the answer is in a robust network of independent nodes, that actively choose how and whom they cooperate / interoperate with.

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

#178

Post by ls612 »

loceng wrote: post #109
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

Until you understand how 1984 extrapolates with today's technologies - and the only defense against corrupt-captured state(s) and industrial complexes toeing the establishment line, in ever increasing consolidation of so-called power-control, is decentralized-distributed tech - and then where the centralization [especially physical infrastructure] becomes their major weakness; yes, there is the control of means of pr…

Guerrilla tactics only work against an enemy with too weak a stomach to exterminate civilians. You’ll notice for instance that there is little guerrilla activity in Russian occupied Ukraine, due to Russia not possessing any such scruples.

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

#179

Post by nirui »

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.

IMO, I2P and Tor were never a solution to this, they are anonymization networks, which adds their own requirement on how to use it, and most people don't need anonymization. These protocols are slow and complex, thus not user friendly.

Maybe aiming a lower tier of security (like what TLS offers) is good enough for regular user. For example, Matrix or Jami.

But the problem with Matrix and Jami is that these are still too complex for regular user. No user, no motivation for the developer and it's a downward spiral from there.

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

#180

Post by Raphell »

I’ve always felt that self-hosting and self-sovereignty aren’t mutually exclusive. Most people don’t avoid freedom because they don’t want it, but because it’s too much hassle. The real question isn’t who wants control, but whether there’s a simpler way for ordinary people to have this sovereignty without wrestling with a pile of tech.
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