4 ms·

I would argue that computing has never been more personal if you’re willing to put in a little effort. The advent of containerization, miniaturization of PC’s,

I would argue that computing has never been more personal if you’re willing to put in a little effort. The advent of containerization, miniaturization of PC’s, and overall drop in cost of technology has allowed anyone to run there own personal intranet, homelab, whatever.

wvenable 2y ago
If you want to run your own little silo completely disconnected from your fellow human beings then it has never been easier. But that was never really all difficult in the first place. I don't think it's truly the problem that needs to be solved.
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  Buy-in from the community is indeed the hard part but I have friends running irc and phpbb we hang out in, and matrix is more or less viable to self host for a group chat, it’s just that 100x more people are using Discord and Signal because of network effects, your one account can give you access to a million communities. I guess activitypub and matrix are meant to be similar in that regard but for whatever reason the learning curve is just a little steeper, so you have to be motivated by ideology to put up with the gaps in usability
  - spencerflem 2y ago
    I really want to love matrix but as it stands right now discord is a lot more usable While im willing to out up with it, its a hard sell to get your friends to use something worse
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    Yeah, that network effect is always the hard part once you want/need to reach out past your personal circle. Even with a personal circle it can ha hard to make people use a better but smaller service.
  - BrenBarn 2y ago
    Matrix has some promise, but it's also essentially VC-funded despite the way they try to present it.
spencerflem 2y ago
I mean, the building blocks are there, but so much has moved into "the cloud". You can't run Just Photoshop anymore, you can only run CC that sends all your images to them, you can't run Word without running Office 365, you cant run most games without Steam, etc etc. And all of the exciting new software is -As-A-Service So while there's more options now for homelab things the overall ecosystem has moved strongly away so there's a lot more to avoid
- DerekL 2y ago
  What's this about Photoshop? As far as I can tell, using cloud storage is an option in Photoshop, it's not required.
  - spencerflem 2y ago
    The only way you can buy it is with cloud included as a subscription
    - DerekL 2y ago
      You said > you can only run CC that sends all your images to them It doesn’t send all your images to Adobe, it only sends the ones you choose to save in the cloud. If you want to complain about having to subscribe to the software instead of purchasing outright, then do that. Don’t complain about something that isn’t happening.
      - spencerflem 2y ago
        It's the key feature that makes it Creative Cloud, didn't mean to imply that it was scanning offline files. They do use the images you upload to train their (non-generative) AI for things like background removal.
  - MiddleEndian 2y ago
    Aside from the Cloud bullshit, Photoshop's auto-update is a pain. After some regression I disabled updates right after they fixed it. But recently when I open Photoshop, it's started giving me a nagging popup about being out-of-date. It's done more-or-less the same thing for many years, just take my subscription money and leave me alone!
nicce 2y ago
Sadly only for the people in very techinal field. Most of the common consumer products are impossible to use local-only.
- interludead 2y ago
  Yep! And opting out is either prohibitively difficult or outright impossible for most people
api 2y ago
Your definition of "anyone" is pretty skewed toward the tech-savvy. Spend some time in the tech support desk of a mobile phone store to get an idea of the general level of technical sophistication of the average person. Average folks are not running containers. They're not installing... anything... except maybe an app from an App Store. Half of them aren't sure what a file is.
- dragonmost 2y ago
  But the hardware availability and affordability gives them the opportunity to learn and experiment if they want to. Even tech-savvy people couldn't do that a decade or 2 ago. Not on a budget.
nfw2 2y ago
people would rather complain than put in a little effort, especially if it means losing the chance to invent an evil empire to rebel against
rldjbpin 2y ago
it is all about growing complexities/limitations and convenience. even at the software level, you are reliant on the os makers allowing certain things to happen. i could not care less about homelab if at the end of the day you need to pay to get syncthing working [1] on your ios device and only sync certain files. [1] https://github.com/MobiusSync/MobiusSync https://github.com/MobiusSync/MobiusSync

wvenable 2y ago

If you want to run your own little silo completely disconnected from your fellow human beings then it has never been easier. But that was never really all difficult in the first place. I don't think it's truly the problem that needs to be solved.

jazzyjackson 2y ago
Buy-in from the community is indeed the hard part but I have friends running irc and phpbb we hang out in, and matrix is more or less viable to self host for a group chat, it’s just that 100x more people are using Discord and Signal because of network effects, your one account can give you access to a million communities. I guess activitypub and matrix are meant to be similar in that regard but for whatever reason the learning curve is just a little steeper, so you have to be motivated by ideology to put up with the gaps in usability
- spencerflem 2y ago
  I really want to love matrix but as it stands right now discord is a lot more usable While im willing to out up with it, its a hard sell to get your friends to use something worse
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Yeah, that network effect is always the hard part once you want/need to reach out past your personal circle. Even with a personal circle it can ha hard to make people use a better but smaller service.
- BrenBarn 2y ago
  Matrix has some promise, but it's also essentially VC-funded despite the way they try to present it.

spencerflem 2y ago

I mean, the building blocks are there, but so much has moved into "the cloud". You can't run Just Photoshop anymore, you can only run CC that sends all your images to them, you can't run Word without running Office 365, you cant run most games without Steam, etc etc. And all of the exciting new software is -As-A-Service So while there's more options now for homelab things the overall ecosystem has moved strongly away so there's a lot more to avoid

DerekL 2y ago
What's this about Photoshop? As far as I can tell, using cloud storage is an option in Photoshop, it's not required.
- spencerflem 2y ago
  The only way you can buy it is with cloud included as a subscription
  - DerekL 2y ago
    You said > you can only run CC that sends all your images to them It doesn’t send all your images to Adobe, it only sends the ones you choose to save in the cloud. If you want to complain about having to subscribe to the software instead of purchasing outright, then do that. Don’t complain about something that isn’t happening.
    - spencerflem 2y ago
      It's the key feature that makes it Creative Cloud, didn't mean to imply that it was scanning offline files. They do use the images you upload to train their (non-generative) AI for things like background removal.
- MiddleEndian 2y ago
  Aside from the Cloud bullshit, Photoshop's auto-update is a pain. After some regression I disabled updates right after they fixed it. But recently when I open Photoshop, it's started giving me a nagging popup about being out-of-date. It's done more-or-less the same thing for many years, just take my subscription money and leave me alone!

nicce 2y ago

Sadly only for the people in very techinal field. Most of the common consumer products are impossible to use local-only.

interludead 2y ago
Yep! And opting out is either prohibitively difficult or outright impossible for most people

api 2y ago

Your definition of "anyone" is pretty skewed toward the tech-savvy. Spend some time in the tech support desk of a mobile phone store to get an idea of the general level of technical sophistication of the average person. Average folks are not running containers. They're not installing... anything... except maybe an app from an App Store. Half of them aren't sure what a file is.

dragonmost 2y ago
But the hardware availability and affordability gives them the opportunity to learn and experiment if they want to. Even tech-savvy people couldn't do that a decade or 2 ago. Not on a budget.

nfw2 2y ago

people would rather complain than put in a little effort, especially if it means losing the chance to invent an evil empire to rebel against

rldjbpin 2y ago

it is all about growing complexities/limitations and convenience. even at the software level, you are reliant on the os makers allowing certain things to happen. i could not care less about homelab if at the end of the day you need to pay to get syncthing working [1] on your ios device and only sync certain files. [1] https://github.com/MobiusSync/MobiusSync https://github.com/MobiusSync/MobiusSync