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I'm happy for an article like this that I can invite people to read. I often tell people that the "cloud" is a lock-in for subscription based everything, where

I'm happy for an article like this that I can invite people to read. I often tell people that the "cloud" is a lock-in for subscription based everything, where you have literally no control of your data nor the slightest insight in to who can access it, where all privacy boils down to whether mega-corporations don't lie, and so many other compromises and shortcomings. Most of the responses are, "but it works for me", "it's convenient", "I don't want to run my own servers", and/or, "everyone else is doing it", as though not using the cloud means all those things go away. Many of these people genuinely don't care about privacy and completely lack the imagination to envision what could be done with their home security cameras' feeds, their Ring doorbells' feeds, the settings on their Nest and so on. Even when we have stories about assholes scaring the shit out of people via babycams, Amazon turning over Ring footage that the homeowner explicitly said not to, or houses getting burglarized because criminals knew the house was empty because the thermostat was set for vacation, people still seem to imagine these aren't the kinds of things that are rare and won't happen to them. It reminds me of the early days of online credit card fraud and online phishing - people had a hard time realizing that it was more likely than they believed. While most people's eyes will glaze over during the discussion of CRDTs, and while I can't wait to see more local tools that negate the need for "cloud" services, there's a lot in this article that can be pointed to when people might benefit from learning about possible long-term issues with the cloud.

optimalquiet 3y ago
And this is why, as a hobbyist, I’m very skeptical of, for lack of a better term, the consumer cloud. We’re not talking about AWS here, we’re talking about companies’ servers (that are actually AWS on the back-end) that they use to offer services to consumers. They insist on calling that “cloud” because everything has to be confusing, I guess. And I think that distinction gets lost in the translation between hobbyists/power users and IT professionals/software engineers. I think those two groups often miscommunicate, because they use the same terms in different ways, because their worlds are so different. It’s not about on-premises vs cloud for corporations, it’s about control over your data and what Apple’s marketing once called “your digital life” (before they went all-in on cloud) for consumers, for normal people, whose recourse when a company does something wrong isn’t “hire the best lawyers in the business and sue them” but “get screwed.” I don’t care what corporations do with their infrastructure, my concern is my own digital life, which is more important to me than the market cap of FAANG.

optimalquiet 3y ago

And this is why, as a hobbyist, I’m very skeptical of, for lack of a better term, the consumer cloud. We’re not talking about AWS here, we’re talking about companies’ servers (that are actually AWS on the back-end) that they use to offer services to consumers. They insist on calling that “cloud” because everything has to be confusing, I guess. And I think that distinction gets lost in the translation between hobbyists/power users and IT professionals/software engineers. I think those two groups often miscommunicate, because they use the same terms in different ways, because their worlds are so different. It’s not about on-premises vs cloud for corporations, it’s about control over your data and what Apple’s marketing once called “your digital life” (before they went all-in on cloud) for consumers, for normal people, whose recourse when a company does something wrong isn’t “hire the best lawyers in the business and sue them” but “get screwed.” I don’t care what corporations do with their infrastructure, my concern is my own digital life, which is more important to me than the market cap of FAANG.