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Philosophizing on your blog seems to be the new way to tilt at windmills. If you're actually interested in self-hosting, https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/a

Philosophizing on your blog seems to be the new way to tilt at windmills. If you're actually interested in self-hosting, https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted is a great resource for self-hosted apps. Roll up your sleeves, get prepared to get lost in documentation, and have some fun! You'll realize the tradeoffs of what to self-host and what not-to quickly as you start playing around with actual technologies. Just remember that your life is production and if you're self-hosting XMPP for your family, you may want to be confident you know how to run XMPP before pushing everyone onto it, so maybe setup a lab or staging environment. But that's fine, it's part of the process! Stop writing screeds and start actually self-hosting. EDIT: Since I'm mostly just reposting the link that OP links in their post, I'll add a couple fun things that I use a lot with self-hosting. https://hoppy.network/ https://hoppy.network/ lets you setup a Wireguard tunnel to have your own static IPv4 /32 and /128 IPv6. https://freerangecloud.com/ https://freerangecloud.com/ gives you similar products but also lets you do things like colocating a Raspberry Pi or getting a VPS at an IX https://www.zerotier.com/ https://www.zerotier.com/ can effortlessly setup a private network between hosts There's more I'm sure, but I like these.

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yewenjie 5y ago
That blog post literally mentions that link.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  I know. Now I made a comment that helps self-hosters just as much as the OP with much less text and much less moralizing.
  - JoshTriplett 5y ago
    Your comment doesn't convince anyone to self-host who isn't already doing so, unlike this blog post. It's absolutely possible to write more concisely if you have a narrower target audience of people who already agree with you.
  - haswell 5y ago
    One of the most important aspects of choosing a solution is understanding the problem first. There's a place for both: 1. Blogs that moralize and talk about a much larger philosophical underlying problem. These help the reader understand a problem that they may not have fully understood. Before, the problem was: "I need a place to host my photos". If that's your only problem, there's no reason not to choose something easy like Google Photos. Only by digging deeper does one start to understand that there's more to it than this, and choosing certain solutions bring with those solutions a whole set of new problems. Now, you realize "I need a place to host my photos and I need it to provide a certain level of privacy, and a certain degree of predictability..." etc. A set of problems that can be solved by self hosting. 2. Blogs that are solution oriented. You already know what you want, now go do it. If all you ever present are solutions, the reader is left to wonder why they'd ever invest the time and effort in doing something that is much easier elsewhere. An investment that does start to make sense if you have problems with the implications of hosting elsewhere.
    - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
      If you're trying to frame the problem in your mind like that, I suggest doing an HN search like https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=self-host&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... to give you a good idea why people self-host. There's lots of prior art.
      - haswell 5y ago
        As a person who self hosts quite a few things, I'm intimately familiar with why people self host. That was not my point. The point is that there exist people who do not understand why self hosting can be valuable, nor should we assume that they will come to HN, do a "self-host" query, and then comb through the myriad of results to back into why this is an interesting topic. You were criticizing the blog post...essentially for existing in its current form...and I pointed out that there are legitimate reasons for such posts to exist. The post was probably not meant for you or I.
dvtrn 5y ago
Philosophizing on your blog seems to be the new way to tilt at windmills. not the first time I’ve seen such comments or sentiments close to it regarding the content of developer blogs, when one gets shared here. I ask most sincerely: isn’t that just one of the many reasons people chose to launch a personal blog in the first place?
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  It surely is. I prefer less of it which is why I made my comment.
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yewenjie 5y ago

That blog post literally mentions that link.

Karrot_Kream 5y ago
I know. Now I made a comment that helps self-hosters just as much as the OP with much less text and much less moralizing.
- JoshTriplett 5y ago
  Your comment doesn't convince anyone to self-host who isn't already doing so, unlike this blog post. It's absolutely possible to write more concisely if you have a narrower target audience of people who already agree with you.
- haswell 5y ago
  One of the most important aspects of choosing a solution is understanding the problem first. There's a place for both: 1. Blogs that moralize and talk about a much larger philosophical underlying problem. These help the reader understand a problem that they may not have fully understood. Before, the problem was: "I need a place to host my photos". If that's your only problem, there's no reason not to choose something easy like Google Photos. Only by digging deeper does one start to understand that there's more to it than this, and choosing certain solutions bring with those solutions a whole set of new problems. Now, you realize "I need a place to host my photos and I need it to provide a certain level of privacy, and a certain degree of predictability..." etc. A set of problems that can be solved by self hosting. 2. Blogs that are solution oriented. You already know what you want, now go do it. If all you ever present are solutions, the reader is left to wonder why they'd ever invest the time and effort in doing something that is much easier elsewhere. An investment that does start to make sense if you have problems with the implications of hosting elsewhere.
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    If you're trying to frame the problem in your mind like that, I suggest doing an HN search like https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=self-host&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... to give you a good idea why people self-host. There's lots of prior art.
    - haswell 5y ago
      As a person who self hosts quite a few things, I'm intimately familiar with why people self host. That was not my point. The point is that there exist people who do not understand why self hosting can be valuable, nor should we assume that they will come to HN, do a "self-host" query, and then comb through the myriad of results to back into why this is an interesting topic. You were criticizing the blog post...essentially for existing in its current form...and I pointed out that there are legitimate reasons for such posts to exist. The post was probably not meant for you or I.

dvtrn 5y ago

Philosophizing on your blog seems to be the new way to tilt at windmills. not the first time I’ve seen such comments or sentiments close to it regarding the content of developer blogs, when one gets shared here. I ask most sincerely: isn’t that just one of the many reasons people chose to launch a personal blog in the first place?

Karrot_Kream 5y ago
It surely is. I prefer less of it which is why I made my comment.

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