4 ms·

Honestly, the Internet as a decentralized global network of computers suggests otherwise. There really shouldn't be any, or very few, datacenters, people should

by dusted 2y ago

Honestly, the Internet as a decentralized global network of computers suggests otherwise. There really shouldn't be any, or very few, datacenters, people should host their own stuff from their own machines, from their own homes. Unfortunately, culture and technology took a different road. It might be hard to look beyond status-quo, but it USED to be easy to _SEND_EMAIL_ from your own machine into the world, sure it came with problems, but they could be overcome. It USED to be easy to host a website on your home computer, simply ask for a static ip, and forward a port or two on your router. All of this was taken away from us in the holy name of convenience (and corporate greed).

euroderf 2y ago
What I would like from the cloud is absolutely positively guaranteed lifetime backups of everything I deem important enough, and heavily encrypted to boot. Everything else cloudish is... extremely optional.
ben_w 2y ago
IIRC direct sending of mail wasn't removed in the name of convenience, it was removed in the name of "99% of incoming mail is junk, can we permanently reject the worst offenders?"
throwaway984393 2y ago
[dead]
jeffbee 2y ago
Distributed hosting is incredibly inefficient.
- AyyEye 2y ago
  Distributed hosting is incredibly efficient. Me browsing a website for my local pizza joint should be a connection from my pc, through a couple of switches/routers, to the PC in their office. As it stands now I have to route out of town to the nearest datacenter hosting their web platform. Then I need to make more requests out of town to every third party analytic, font, and framework their platform includes. Not to mention the associated energy cost of running all of that code. Every one of those requests triggers a cascade of dozens of database updates, replications, and algorithm updates across many geographically diverse datacenters. (Yes I am aware that 'distributed' means many different things depending on the context and is largely a meaningless word)
  - smelendez 2y ago
    Restaurants are a good example of where this breaks down, though, I think. There are cash-only bars with mechanical registers, and food trucks with no electric hookups, and small third-party kitchens in bars and corner stores that all have websites or at least social media profiles with hours, menu, location, etc. These businesses have no interest in running a web server. They may not even have internet access onsite beyond employee cellphones.
    - hackable_sand 2y ago
      Wrong angle.
    - ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
      Exactly right. No one is bemoaning the lack of restauranteurs constructing their own buildings or farming their own food. Why do we want them to host their own website?
    - INTPenis 2y ago
      You're absolutely right, and yet the romantic in me still thinks there is hope. I have an excellent example where some friends used to run a wifi mesh in my city. They handed out mesh nodes to small business owners like restaurants and corner shops. These devices were tiny, and only required power since they were mesh nodes. The point here is that these nodes lasted for years. Sometimes we went around and restarted, or updated firmware, but by and large they worked so well that they were forgotten by the business owner. This was 10 years ago, today a local web server, or similar device, might work in a similar way. One idea would be to integrate it into their internet package. They get a router that gives their shop wifi, at the same time it also runs their ordering system. I think it's possible, anything is possible if you're motivated, but large businesses don't like independence. They prefer that small business and end users are dependent on them.
      - jeffbee 2y ago
        The masses of small businesses yearn to put their local cable monopoly on the critical path of their revenue? This is your belief?
lionkor 2y ago
Most of this is people like you and me completely ignoring IPv6 and similar technologies, just because they're not the default
CityOfThrowaway 2y ago
It's really an economy of scale thing, and is not that surprising. The economy of scale is separately at the level of hardware procurement, security, interop, bandwidth, access to electricity, and probably other things. This isn't a normative claim. Simply that the tendency for these types of things to centralize as complexity and demand increases is natural. I think it's tough to say that it was taken away, or that there's anybody in particular to blame. The hardware market moves fast, the capabilities needed evolve fast, etc. It's still 100% possible to host your own stuff. Many people do, but it's obviously a vast minority. But it's not like there are licensure requirements to host your own website. Some things are disallowed by consumer ISPs, but you can also generally upgrade that allow it. It's worth noting that when it was simple and unrestricted, it was also vastly more expensive and far fewer people participated. Part of the reason why internet is so cheap now (on a $ / byte basis) is that new offerings were designed that restricted people on the now available cheap plans from doing things that are very expensive.
- jalk 2y ago
  Can you can give an example of what expensive things those cheap plans are restricted from having access to (IPv4 blocks?)
  - lmz 2y ago
    A public IPv4 address for some, general restrictions against using it as a server / hosting any services in the AUP for others.
  - protocolture 2y ago
    CGNAT tends to make your life very difficult. Lots of residential internet plans will block certain ports, even if you do end up with a public ip.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  > It's still 100% possible to host your own stuff. It's absolutely not. A minority of people have direct access to a network that will let other people reach any service they want to host. You need to carefully select your location to get that. And a lot of people don't even have direct access to a public address. And that's not even going into the monopolized federated protocols like email, where you can only do anything if big-tech allows.
mistrial9 2y ago
Woz was famously quoted as "what is this - biggest datacenter takes all?"
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
The internet protocols suggest this but the common 1gbps/35Mbps suggest that they want you to use it to consume rather than host.
ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
>All of this was taken away from us in the holy name of convenience (and corporate greed) Corporate greed will serve up whatever people will pay for. I (and nearly 100% of people) am willing to pay for the convenience of not running my own email service, so the greedy corporations which sold that solution succeeded while others failed. Also think of Capex vs Opex. I don't want to drop $4k on an at-home PC to play with new AI toys, but I am willing to spend $20 per month paying for ChatGPT and Claude AI access.

by dusted 2y ago

euroderf 2y ago

What I would like from the cloud is absolutely positively guaranteed lifetime backups of everything I deem important enough, and heavily encrypted to boot. Everything else cloudish is... extremely optional.

ben_w 2y ago

IIRC direct sending of mail wasn't removed in the name of convenience, it was removed in the name of "99% of incoming mail is junk, can we permanently reject the worst offenders?"

throwaway984393 2y ago

[dead]

jeffbee 2y ago

Distributed hosting is incredibly inefficient.

AyyEye 2y ago
Distributed hosting is incredibly efficient. Me browsing a website for my local pizza joint should be a connection from my pc, through a couple of switches/routers, to the PC in their office. As it stands now I have to route out of town to the nearest datacenter hosting their web platform. Then I need to make more requests out of town to every third party analytic, font, and framework their platform includes. Not to mention the associated energy cost of running all of that code. Every one of those requests triggers a cascade of dozens of database updates, replications, and algorithm updates across many geographically diverse datacenters. (Yes I am aware that 'distributed' means many different things depending on the context and is largely a meaningless word)
- smelendez 2y ago
  Restaurants are a good example of where this breaks down, though, I think. There are cash-only bars with mechanical registers, and food trucks with no electric hookups, and small third-party kitchens in bars and corner stores that all have websites or at least social media profiles with hours, menu, location, etc. These businesses have no interest in running a web server. They may not even have internet access onsite beyond employee cellphones.
  - hackable_sand 2y ago
    Wrong angle.
  - ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
    Exactly right. No one is bemoaning the lack of restauranteurs constructing their own buildings or farming their own food. Why do we want them to host their own website?
  - INTPenis 2y ago
    You're absolutely right, and yet the romantic in me still thinks there is hope. I have an excellent example where some friends used to run a wifi mesh in my city. They handed out mesh nodes to small business owners like restaurants and corner shops. These devices were tiny, and only required power since they were mesh nodes. The point here is that these nodes lasted for years. Sometimes we went around and restarted, or updated firmware, but by and large they worked so well that they were forgotten by the business owner. This was 10 years ago, today a local web server, or similar device, might work in a similar way. One idea would be to integrate it into their internet package. They get a router that gives their shop wifi, at the same time it also runs their ordering system. I think it's possible, anything is possible if you're motivated, but large businesses don't like independence. They prefer that small business and end users are dependent on them.
    - jeffbee 2y ago
      The masses of small businesses yearn to put their local cable monopoly on the critical path of their revenue? This is your belief?

lionkor 2y ago

Most of this is people like you and me completely ignoring IPv6 and similar technologies, just because they're not the default

CityOfThrowaway 2y ago

It's really an economy of scale thing, and is not that surprising. The economy of scale is separately at the level of hardware procurement, security, interop, bandwidth, access to electricity, and probably other things. This isn't a normative claim. Simply that the tendency for these types of things to centralize as complexity and demand increases is natural. I think it's tough to say that it was taken away, or that there's anybody in particular to blame. The hardware market moves fast, the capabilities needed evolve fast, etc. It's still 100% possible to host your own stuff. Many people do, but it's obviously a vast minority. But it's not like there are licensure requirements to host your own website. Some things are disallowed by consumer ISPs, but you can also generally upgrade that allow it. It's worth noting that when it was simple and unrestricted, it was also vastly more expensive and far fewer people participated. Part of the reason why internet is so cheap now (on a $ / byte basis) is that new offerings were designed that restricted people on the now available cheap plans from doing things that are very expensive.

jalk 2y ago
Can you can give an example of what expensive things those cheap plans are restricted from having access to (IPv4 blocks?)
- lmz 2y ago
  A public IPv4 address for some, general restrictions against using it as a server / hosting any services in the AUP for others.
- protocolture 2y ago
  CGNAT tends to make your life very difficult. Lots of residential internet plans will block certain ports, even if you do end up with a public ip.
marcosdumay 2y ago
> It's still 100% possible to host your own stuff. It's absolutely not. A minority of people have direct access to a network that will let other people reach any service they want to host. You need to carefully select your location to get that. And a lot of people don't even have direct access to a public address. And that's not even going into the monopolized federated protocols like email, where you can only do anything if big-tech allows.

mistrial9 2y ago

Woz was famously quoted as "what is this - biggest datacenter takes all?"

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

The internet protocols suggest this but the common 1gbps/35Mbps suggest that they want you to use it to consume rather than host.

ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago

>All of this was taken away from us in the holy name of convenience (and corporate greed) Corporate greed will serve up whatever people will pay for. I (and nearly 100% of people) am willing to pay for the convenience of not running my own email service, so the greedy corporations which sold that solution succeeded while others failed. Also think of Capex vs Opex. I don't want to drop $4k on an at-home PC to play with new AI toys, but I am willing to spend $20 per month paying for ChatGPT and Claude AI access.