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What I Self Host

fredrikmeyer.net

21–30 of 149 posts

Re: What I Self Host

#21

Self hosting is great. The examples in this article are not exactly shining examples: an API that shows your Spotify stats? If we’re going to talk about self hosting music, I’d like to mention Roon, which is loved by audiophiles. It aims at creating a magazine like experience for navigating and discovering music. Been using it since COVID and it’s completely transformed my experience of listening to something else th…

Thanks for the tip! I run these things mostly for fun - the Spotify stats thing isn't super useful, but it is fun to look at how my listening habits have changed over the years.

It slightly more than just an API though: one can't aggregate directly from the Spotify API.

Re: What I Self Host

#22
post #4

I deplore this weakening and dilution of the term “self-hosting”. In my opinion, if your services had downtime today, you are not “self-hosting”. If you depend on anything which has “cloud” in its name, you are not “self-hosting”. If you cannot reasonably quickly access your hardware physically, like inserting or replacing an add-on card, you are not “self-hosting”. EDIT: It’s like saying “I don’t take the bus! I ‘se…

It's a spectrum that has been illuminated by time. In the old times you had to do all these. Now you can cut this somewhere:

- Power + cooling, physical security, network. (Old school LAN party)

- Can you access the bare metal OS? (Hetzner/OVH bare metal)

- Can you access a VM and decide what runs on it? (EC2 + associated services, K8s, etc, etc)

- Can you run a function? (Lambda for example)

So the meaning has wandered to something between the first and second, IMO.

Re: What I Self Host

#23
post #4

I deplore this weakening and dilution of the term “self-hosting”. In my opinion, if your services had downtime today, you are not “self-hosting”. If you depend on anything which has “cloud” in its name, you are not “self-hosting”. If you cannot reasonably quickly access your hardware physically, like inserting or replacing an add-on card, you are not “self-hosting”. EDIT: It’s like saying “I don’t take the bus! I ‘se…

The meaning is I install my own software and set up as I want. Some of it on my 2 mini servers in my living room, some (prosody and seafile) on a VPS. Calling the latter not self hosted seems weird to me.

Re: What I Self Host

#24
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven't picked together the hardware for your home server at home, can you really say that you're self-hosting? Or if you haven't really built the components yourself, are you actually self -hosting? If you cannot reasonably quickly debug your hardware faults physically, you're not "self-hosting". It seems everyone draws the line of "self-hosting" differently. For some, "self-hosting" could be running Wordpres…

> [Paraphrased] Words mean different things to different people! Anyone can choose any definition they want! No, words have quite definite meanings. Otherwise, they are not an aid to communication.

How is tributes to lords from vassals related to communication? Oh wait, you didn't mean that meaning of the word "aid"? But words only have one meaning...

Re: What I Self Host

#25
> I pay for a cheap droplet at DigitalOcean, about $5 per month, and an additional dollar for backup.

Wait, I thought self hosting meant having your own hardware at like home running all your services. Not DigitalOcean.

Re: What I Self Host

#26
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you call what the author is doing?

It would be good if there was a nice, simple, positive word for it; people might not feel the need to appropriate “self-host” otherwise. Unfortunately, I don’t know of any.

I asked because I used the term self-host for both my services that I run on a VPS I rent from Dreamhost, as well as services that I host on my homelab and expose over tailscale. I don't have a good set of terminology to differentiate between the two, so I call both of them self-hosting. I was a bit surprised you felt so strongly about it.

Re: What I Self Host

#27
post #4

I deplore this weakening and dilution of the term “self-hosting”. In my opinion, if your services had downtime today, you are not “self-hosting”. If you depend on anything which has “cloud” in its name, you are not “self-hosting”. If you cannot reasonably quickly access your hardware physically, like inserting or replacing an add-on card, you are not “self-hosting”. EDIT: It’s like saying “I don’t take the bus! I ‘se…

How do you define it? If your ISP has a problem, you can't access that hardware physically, so it would seem this definition rules out anyone that doesn't control an ISP.

Re: What I Self Host

#28
post #4

I deplore this weakening and dilution of the term “self-hosting”. In my opinion, if your services had downtime today, you are not “self-hosting”. If you depend on anything which has “cloud” in its name, you are not “self-hosting”. If you cannot reasonably quickly access your hardware physically, like inserting or replacing an add-on card, you are not “self-hosting”. EDIT: It’s like saying “I don’t take the bus! I ‘se…

It's a spectrum that has been illuminated by time. In the old times you had to do all these. Now you can cut this somewhere: - Power + cooling, physical security, network. (Old school LAN party) - Can you access the bare metal OS? (Hetzner/OVH bare metal) - Can you access a VM and decide what runs on it? (EC2 + associated services, K8s, etc, etc) - Can you run a function? (Lambda for example) So the meaning has wande…

The meaning has only “wandered” due to the marketing of dishonest hosting companies, and their partially self-deluded customers who want to believe the marketing in order to avoid doing the hard work of actually self-hosting.

Re: What I Self Host

#30
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven't picked together the hardware for your home server at home, can you really say that you're self-hosting? Or if you haven't really built the components yourself, are you actually self -hosting? If you cannot reasonably quickly debug your hardware faults physically, you're not "self-hosting". It seems everyone draws the line of "self-hosting" differently. For some, "self-hosting" could be running Wordpres…

> [Paraphrased] Words mean different things to different people! Anyone can choose any definition they want! No, words have quite definite meanings. Otherwise, they are not an aid to communication.

> No, words have quite definite meanings.

Were that the case, “literally” would not literally mean both itself and its opposite.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/misuse-of-literally

Words change meaning frequently throughout history, depending on how they are (mis)used. Or they can change meaning depending on context or part of the country/world.

https://www.vox.com/2015/11/29/9806038/great-british-baking-...

Sometimes drastically.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TooAfraidToAsk/comments/kc41mu/why_...

> Otherwise, they are not an aid to communication.

I do agree with you that it makes it harder, but communication does depend on more than just the words.

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