3 ms·

It will be great this set up can be commoditised so everyone can buy one for themselves/family.

cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
You can add it the bucket of similar crap that nerds make when they don’t think to actually check if they’re building something that solves a problem that people actually want solved. The reality is that if you go to any family BBQ and start going on about the importance of self-hosting, I - someone that’s been working with computers my whole life - am going to roll my eyes and not be all that interested in the conversation, let alone anyone else there (chances are they don’t want to talk about computers at all). The reality is that these open-source / self-hosted solutions are, the vast majority of the time, harder to use and maintain. There are few things that sound less appealing to me than dealing with the realities of helping my family and friends with using any of that stuff. This is all just some nerd’s out of touch pipe dream.
- pdimitar 2y ago
  > This is all just some nerd’s out of touch pipe dream. Yes, though only because it's a lot of trouble to set up today. If it were completely commoditizated -- imagine one more button when setting up a new phone ("Choose where your data resides: Apple, Google, Facebook, Self hosted") and it was completely transparent then it would be used much more, especially if that's complemented by one of the nerds setting up e.g. a neighborhood sync server and everybody around knowing it and using it. So yes, you are not wrong but the situation can change dramatically if ergonomics are improved. Which sadly most of the nerds never work on.
  - unlikelytomato 2y ago
    I used to think this. The Google, Apple, and Facebook options are the improved ergonomics solution. It just never pans out for these open solutions. I've been waiting decades for it things to get to that level, but it always ends up the same way - fiddling with servers.
    - pdimitar 2y ago
      You are restating that the self-hosted options are not as ergonomic yet which I already acknowledged. As for waiting, yeah, sad story, but most of us don't want to be on the computer for 16-18h a day anymore. I implore any of the more privileged programmers -- people with job security, $200K+ annual salary, a lot of social safety nets -- to open their eyes and stop fucking around with the one millionth LISP interpreter and just start making non-corporate-controlled tech already.
      - unlikelytomato 2y ago
        understood. I am only extending that to say that virtually all software is built with the headspace of "some amount of maintenance" is to be expected. To overcome this, it needs to be delegated to someone. That someone will cost money. It's unclear to how this cycle will ever be broken unless the entire solution is somehow also controlled and produced with uniform open source hardware.
        pdimitar 2y ago
        Sure, I don't disagree with that, though I think that we the "nerds" should _really_ stop churning tech and versions of stuff so hard, but that's sadly outside of your control and mine. In other words, if you built one nice Golang / Rust program and only update the server once every 3 months, you can go quite far without touching it too much. Likely 3-5 years.
  - leptons 2y ago
    So, say you choose the "self hosted" option. I really hope you have at least a RAID10 with 2-drive failure, and regular off-site and off-line backups as well. Choosing "self hosted" is a very risky option, because most people have no clue how to protect their data from loss. I'm sure you'll explain next that some hack0r will figure out how to do redundant backup self-hosted for very little cost that even the stupidest human could use, but I just don't see that being an option in my lifetime, if ever. Okay, so then "self-host" in the cloud? Well that's not really "self-hosted" is it? I will agree that nerds work far too much on pointless pursuits.
- smeej 2y ago
  I get what you're saying, but not all of those things are self-hosted. For example, Proton Mail isn't harder to use than Gmail. Signal isn't harder to use than any other messaging app. I've had great luck convincing even church ladies in their 60s to use both just by explaining that "end-to-end encryption" means that only the sender and recipient can read the messages, not big tech companies and advertisers.

You can add it the bucket of similar crap that nerds make when they don’t think to actually check if they’re building something that solves a problem that people actually want solved. The reality is that if you go to any family BBQ and start going on about the importance of self-hosting, I - someone that’s been working with computers my whole life - am going to roll my eyes and not be all that interested in the conversation, let alone anyone else there (chances are they don’t want to talk about computers at all). The reality is that these open-source / self-hosted solutions are, the vast majority of the time, harder to use and maintain. There are few things that sound less appealing to me than dealing with the realities of helping my family and friends with using any of that stuff. This is all just some nerd’s out of touch pipe dream.

pdimitar 2y ago
> This is all just some nerd’s out of touch pipe dream. Yes, though only because it's a lot of trouble to set up today. If it were completely commoditizated -- imagine one more button when setting up a new phone ("Choose where your data resides: Apple, Google, Facebook, Self hosted") and it was completely transparent then it would be used much more, especially if that's complemented by one of the nerds setting up e.g. a neighborhood sync server and everybody around knowing it and using it. So yes, you are not wrong but the situation can change dramatically if ergonomics are improved. Which sadly most of the nerds never work on.
- unlikelytomato 2y ago
  I used to think this. The Google, Apple, and Facebook options are the improved ergonomics solution. It just never pans out for these open solutions. I've been waiting decades for it things to get to that level, but it always ends up the same way - fiddling with servers.
  - pdimitar 2y ago
    You are restating that the self-hosted options are not as ergonomic yet which I already acknowledged. As for waiting, yeah, sad story, but most of us don't want to be on the computer for 16-18h a day anymore. I implore any of the more privileged programmers -- people with job security, $200K+ annual salary, a lot of social safety nets -- to open their eyes and stop fucking around with the one millionth LISP interpreter and just start making non-corporate-controlled tech already.
    - unlikelytomato 2y ago
      understood. I am only extending that to say that virtually all software is built with the headspace of "some amount of maintenance" is to be expected. To overcome this, it needs to be delegated to someone. That someone will cost money. It's unclear to how this cycle will ever be broken unless the entire solution is somehow also controlled and produced with uniform open source hardware.
      - pdimitar 2y ago
        Sure, I don't disagree with that, though I think that we the "nerds" should _really_ stop churning tech and versions of stuff so hard, but that's sadly outside of your control and mine. In other words, if you built one nice Golang / Rust program and only update the server once every 3 months, you can go quite far without touching it too much. Likely 3-5 years.
- leptons 2y ago
  So, say you choose the "self hosted" option. I really hope you have at least a RAID10 with 2-drive failure, and regular off-site and off-line backups as well. Choosing "self hosted" is a very risky option, because most people have no clue how to protect their data from loss. I'm sure you'll explain next that some hack0r will figure out how to do redundant backup self-hosted for very little cost that even the stupidest human could use, but I just don't see that being an option in my lifetime, if ever. Okay, so then "self-host" in the cloud? Well that's not really "self-hosted" is it? I will agree that nerds work far too much on pointless pursuits.
smeej 2y ago
I get what you're saying, but not all of those things are self-hosted. For example, Proton Mail isn't harder to use than Gmail. Signal isn't harder to use than any other messaging app. I've had great luck convincing even church ladies in their 60s to use both just by explaining that "end-to-end encryption" means that only the sender and recipient can read the messages, not big tech companies and advertisers.