Why not self-cloud, on the cloud?
Hardware: The Cloud
Applications, Data, Control: Self
The future is not self-hosted
261–270 of 459 posts
Re: The future is not self-hosted
#262I’m never clear why the solution I have - a kind of hybrid of cloud and local - isn’t more popular.
I make use of google drive, apps and google photos and therefore suffer the knowledge that my stuff is probably being used to train AI (I’m personally comfortable with this) - but then I have local backups and sync for everything. InsycHQ gives me a locally (and NAS) backed up version of all my documents, I also backup all photos shot by my wife and I to my Synology, and then daily backup in 2x places that I own from there. My films and media are locally stored, and I buy a fair bit from BandCamp and I use Plex to serve but I also have Spotify for the convenience factor. …and so on
In other words - it’s a sort of multi-tiered approach. I’m not subject to the whims of cloud providers because if they change their pricing or terms radically I’ve still got all my stuff locally; ditto backups on infrastructure that I own and control in-house.
It’s always seemed to me like this is a pretty good setup, combining the utility of cloud with the reassurance of self hosting.
Re: The future is not self-hosted
#263The 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…
I've always thought it would be great for the government to provide a free domain name for every citizen. There's really not much you can do without DNS.
Re: The future is not self-hosted
#264Moxie Marlinspike nailed this in his web3 critique from a couple years ago: "People don't want to run their own servers, and never will. The premise for web1 was that everyone on the internet would be both a publisher and consumer of content as well as infrastructure... However – and I don't think this can be emphasized enough – that is not what people want." That said, the discussion seems stuck in a false binary be…
Moxie is wrong, he likes to project his own ideas as wisdom and always factually correct. P2P networks have flourished. Bittorrent, bitcoin, Tor just to name a few successful ones
Re: The future is not self-hosted
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
it has never been easier to poison the well of knowledge at the scale possible today. the internet enabled instantaneous dissemination whatever version of reality tickles your fancy. the effort required is also minimal. This has never been possible in the past.
The same was true of the printing press, though, at least in comparison to the communication of the previous era. It enabled lies and propaganda to be spread far quicker than ever before, and by people of every rank in society, with (comparatively) minimal effort. And yet, despite this, we think of Gutenberg's invention as one of the most important tools of the modern era for bringing about societal change and enabli…
> Is there something materially different here with the internet?
Yes. There are effectively no hard copies. It is possible to change the historical record of any non-printed material to suit your particular needs like never before.
You can think of this as a world beyond Orwell's or Bradbury's wildest nightmares.
Re: The future is not self-hosted
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who is more highly incentivized than oneself, to keep their valuable data and treasured memories safe and sustained?
No one. But unfortunately, more than just incentive is required to make it happen.
Good luck being owned. If you don't take the action to safe guard your personal data, no one will. Stop living in a fantasy
Re: The future is not self-hosted
#267There are different kinds of self-hosting. Sure, you can own your server and have it at home. It must be nice to have enough space at home to dedicate some to a server room (servers are noisy btw). But many people live in small apartments in a city and so don't have that luxury. You can own your server but rent some rack space from a data center to put it into. That would still be self-hosting. You can rent a virtual…
What? That's the most ridiculous argument I have seen to justify not have a homeserver. Even in the smallest places, it should not be that hard to fit a few low-powered and high perf min PCs and few SBCs. It's all about how badly do you need that control and freedom
Re: The future is not self-hosted
#268There are different kinds of self-hosting. Sure, you can own your server and have it at home. It must be nice to have enough space at home to dedicate some to a server room (servers are noisy btw). But many people live in small apartments in a city and so don't have that luxury. You can own your server but rent some rack space from a data center to put it into. That would still be self-hosting. You can rent a virtual…
> You can rent a virtual or dedicated server from a hosting company, and even that would be self-hosting. That's what I do. I use Linode/Akamai, which now has encrypted VPS instances. Ideally, I'd have my own hardware but I don't want to deal with the maintenance and failure cases (house fire, etc). I think a VPS is a solid tradeoff.
Agreed. I have shifted a lot of my services to VPSes just because it's easier to deal with. However, it comes with less freedom and control
Re: The future is not self-hosted
#269"The future" is relative and contextual. Different tools for different tasks, different solutions for different problems.
Re: The future is not self-hosted
#270Self-hosting isn't just about tech choices — it's about *who controls access to knowledge*. During the Enlightenment, owning a physical copy of a book meant intellectual freedom. You didn’t rent ideas; you had them. Today, most digital knowledge is hosted, locked, or streamed — *leased from platforms*, not owned. We’re in fact drifting into *digital feudalism*, where access to culture, tools, and even history depends…
I personally prefer owning my content, physical books, and having local copies. But if I’m being honest, I think this claim that if you don’t own the book you don’t have the knowledge and society will turn into digital feudalism is hyperbole. Knowledge is proliferating faster than ever, becoming more accessible than ever, and it’s easier than ever before to get the info that you’re searching for, even in this streami…
Physical book I can give to my children.
Steam library not so much, most likely they will have to re-buy the games because even if they inherit or I just leave credentials and 2FA I can imagine someone there in business thinking "hey this account is 100 years old, we should clean that up, unless guy sends us birth certificate and proof he is still alive.".