I self-host a lot of stuff.
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@neil Me too. The best comparison I heard (was that you?) was: backyard chickens.
Some people have these. It gives them certain benefits, not the least having something to care for. But they *need* to be cared for.@henryk @neil I was just thinking about gardening. I grow veg because I want to, not to save money or because I don't trust the shop.
I self host some things (but mostly only on my LAN) and use a mix of self managed and provided services for other things. I'd rather have a healthy ecosystem of good providers people can choose instead of using Google and Microsoft for everything, rather than expect everyone to self host.
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I self-host a lot of stuff. Nearly everything that I use. FOSS and self-hosting is a massive part of my computing experience.
I love reading about people enjoying / exploring self-hosting stuff.
I struggle when people advocate "just self-host it", without giving due consideration to the costs, risks, security considerations, and so on.
I know that I've posted this a few times now, but this discussion seems to pop up quite a lot. So:
@neil Great piece. I am a year into self-hosting and did it entirely for the learning experience.
I quickly realised that I wasn't confident enough in my security to use Nextcloud or Vaultwarden and am aware that I have probably made my home network vulnerable to a concerted attack.
So it has ended up very much a small scale hobby, not hosting anything confidential or essential to day-to-day functioning (where I pay for Proton, Signal, Bitwarden etc.).
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@neil I self host, knowing the risks and challenges. Those same risks and challenges are why I don't push it on others, but I will fully support anyone who does want to take it on.
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I self-host a lot of stuff. Nearly everything that I use. FOSS and self-hosting is a massive part of my computing experience.
I love reading about people enjoying / exploring self-hosting stuff.
I struggle when people advocate "just self-host it", without giving due consideration to the costs, risks, security considerations, and so on.
I know that I've posted this a few times now, but this discussion seems to pop up quite a lot. So:
@neil
I have built and operated my own hardware firewall, and it worked wonderfully, until my ISP changed my modem to a non-bridgeable oneI have built (numerous times) a software server on my laptop to host a local blog. I wrote tutorials to myself so I can replicate it on the next occasion—which always necessitated a refreshed tutorial
I want to have a hardware firewall between me and the internet. I want a non-google email. I kind of want my own Fediverse instance
I don't have the time, am low on money, and have few spoons
I will find that firewall, but it will likely be a secondhand commercial rig, and my networking knowledge/skills aren't there
I want to build a DMZ for IoT things, run my own cameras, keep my smart thermostats from calling home every fifteen minutes
But I can't find the energy to figure out how to freaking use the thermostats I have
I'm with you 100%—I could self-host... most things
But I can't, actually
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I self-host a lot of stuff. Nearly everything that I use. FOSS and self-hosting is a massive part of my computing experience.
I love reading about people enjoying / exploring self-hosting stuff.
I struggle when people advocate "just self-host it", without giving due consideration to the costs, risks, security considerations, and so on.
I know that I've posted this a few times now, but this discussion seems to pop up quite a lot. So:
@neil I have self-hosted stuff in the past, and occasionally think about doing so again for some stuff. But less and less of my computering is recreational and I choose to pay companies to worry about everything for me rather than spend my spare time doing more of what I do when I'm working.
Which is, of course, a kind of privilege in itself.
None of that is a criticism of course, just a reality that I've resigned myself to and remind myself of every time I think "oh, I could set that up myself".
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I self-host a lot of stuff. Nearly everything that I use. FOSS and self-hosting is a massive part of my computing experience.
I love reading about people enjoying / exploring self-hosting stuff.
I struggle when people advocate "just self-host it", without giving due consideration to the costs, risks, security considerations, and so on.
I know that I've posted this a few times now, but this discussion seems to pop up quite a lot. So:
@neil and you gotta hope the tools you’re using is actually secure
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@neil “just host it yourself” is techno-libertarian nonsense. It’s like the Linux crowd’s “all you need to do is recompile the flux capacitor with the flibertygibbet flag and reverse polarity on the ant hill and if you can’t do that you don’t deserve to have a computer“ stuff.
It’s also notably atomising. Community level hosting is one thing — and has its own problems when confidentiality is an issue — but self hosting is just out of reach of most people.
As opposed to 'just pay the faceless corp instead of self-hosting.' This is notably not techno-libertarian at all, very inclusive, and the opposite of atomizing --
just look at Facebook and Twitter after all, they are the *Threads* that knit together our nations!!!If self-hosting shit is anything like a political statement, I'd say it's closer to anarchy than libertarianism.
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I self-host a lot of stuff. Nearly everything that I use. FOSS and self-hosting is a massive part of my computing experience.
I love reading about people enjoying / exploring self-hosting stuff.
I struggle when people advocate "just self-host it", without giving due consideration to the costs, risks, security considerations, and so on.
I know that I've posted this a few times now, but this discussion seems to pop up quite a lot. So:
@neil in a better timeline, i'd like the idea of neighborhood/community hosting. like, the local library doing it, with help of tech savvy volunteers. that would be wholesome
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I self-host a lot of stuff. Nearly everything that I use. FOSS and self-hosting is a massive part of my computing experience.
I love reading about people enjoying / exploring self-hosting stuff.
I struggle when people advocate "just self-host it", without giving due consideration to the costs, risks, security considerations, and so on.
I know that I've posted this a few times now, but this discussion seems to pop up quite a lot. So:
@neil "It appears that “self-hosting” might mean different things to different people."
Definitely. We are able to do #selfhosting because we are local ISP for 25 years. We run our own datacenter from at least 8 years, and I was planning how to do the waste heat recycling for 10 years. We have access to second-hand hardware, because it would be hard to afford only the new hardware.
So #selfhosting is still collective activity of some kind, you need small business, or cooperative, or something, because you have expenses.
I suppose aggregating VPS-es for multiple instances on same physical hardware may have some advantages eg. with containers sharing the same ZFS filesystem (you can turn on eg. de-duplication of files)
So the #selfhosting usually anway about seeking some kind of cooperation. I would not be able to "selfhost" without cooperating with experienced admin...
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I self-host a lot of stuff. Nearly everything that I use. FOSS and self-hosting is a massive part of my computing experience.
I love reading about people enjoying / exploring self-hosting stuff.
I struggle when people advocate "just self-host it", without giving due consideration to the costs, risks, security considerations, and so on.
I know that I've posted this a few times now, but this discussion seems to pop up quite a lot. So:
@neil
Do you recommend yunohost? -
@neil
Do you recommend yunohost?@unqualifiedtechbros I have no experience of it, I'm afraid.
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@neil and you gotta hope the tools you’re using is actually secure
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I self-host a lot of stuff. Nearly everything that I use. FOSS and self-hosting is a massive part of my computing experience.
I love reading about people enjoying / exploring self-hosting stuff.
I struggle when people advocate "just self-host it", without giving due consideration to the costs, risks, security considerations, and so on.
I know that I've posted this a few times now, but this discussion seems to pop up quite a lot. So:
@neil That is an excellent article.
I do think that you can self-host on someone else's computer, shrinking all the financial costs to a couple of small ones (hosting fee and domain name; just those are cheaper than having any kind of home internet connection).
I run a root server in the cloud, on an OpenStack instance. The entire machine is defined by me. I regard it as self-hosting.
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I self-host a lot of stuff. Nearly everything that I use. FOSS and self-hosting is a massive part of my computing experience.
I love reading about people enjoying / exploring self-hosting stuff.
I struggle when people advocate "just self-host it", without giving due consideration to the costs, risks, security considerations, and so on.
I know that I've posted this a few times now, but this discussion seems to pop up quite a lot. So:
@neil And (I'm yet to read the full article, but) the upcoming raise in hardware prices will make the entry price on self-hosting even more complicated to reach -
@neil That is an excellent article.
I do think that you can self-host on someone else's computer, shrinking all the financial costs to a couple of small ones (hosting fee and domain name; just those are cheaper than having any kind of home internet connection).
I run a root server in the cloud, on an OpenStack instance. The entire machine is defined by me. I regard it as self-hosting.
@khleedril Great!
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@neil in a better timeline, i'd like the idea of neighborhood/community hosting. like, the local library doing it, with help of tech savvy volunteers. that would be wholesome
@NocturnalNessa @neil We, in Russia had such thing before (and looks like will have in the future
), when the ISP prices were high and unaffordable for usual people, but there were a lot of coaxial cables and 10BASE2 (IIRC) network equipment on the market for a reasonable price. So, people just connected apartments and buildings with these cables and had a local network in the block (or between some blocks) for filesharing, gaming in local network, etc… Something like this: https://medium.com/@pv.safronov/moscow-state-university-network-built-by-students-211539855cf9 -
I self-host a lot of stuff. Nearly everything that I use. FOSS and self-hosting is a massive part of my computing experience.
I love reading about people enjoying / exploring self-hosting stuff.
I struggle when people advocate "just self-host it", without giving due consideration to the costs, risks, security considerations, and so on.
I know that I've posted this a few times now, but this discussion seems to pop up quite a lot. So:
@neil I think this summarizes why I'm suffering from more or less severe burnout symptoms on a daily basis.
When I'm done developing depressingly poor quality software projects designed to "generate" revenue for a greedy tech company for the day, I am expected to keep on top of the never-ending bot attacks against my self-managed services.
Every time I install a new kernel version or significant package updates, my anxiety peaks while I wait for machines and services - some of them being the backbone of my digital existence - to come back up.
I'd rather just pay for someone else to do it, but experience has shown that companies can't be trusted with anything anymore as increasing profits has become the driving force behind everything with quality and reliability being downgraded to a mere afterthought.
I hate that system and I hate being part of it but I have to pay my ever growing greed and inflation driven bills so what can I do?
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As opposed to 'just pay the faceless corp instead of self-hosting.' This is notably not techno-libertarian at all, very inclusive, and the opposite of atomizing --
just look at Facebook and Twitter after all, they are the *Threads* that knit together our nations!!!If self-hosting shit is anything like a political statement, I'd say it's closer to anarchy than libertarianism.
@petko @neil @Colman Agreed. If you need something, like some black-box to share files with other people — you could just make something yourself with existing technical skills. Or organize with some other people with necessary skills and make a thing. This looks like some kind of anarchy and definitely not like "techno-libertarianism" lol.
The "how-to" knowledge is freely acessible and no one hides it with paywall — you can learn or get help from other people (for beer or money, etc) if you don't have a time/courage to learn.
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@neil I think self-hosting is a bit like doing your own car servicing.
Sure, you can do it and if you know what you're doing you'll probably be happy and saving yourself some money - but unless you *actually* know what you're doing, many things can and will come back to bite you in the ass
Hell, I *do* know what I'm doing and I'm very happy to pay someone else to do quite a lot of things I could, theoretically, do myself.
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I self-host a lot of stuff. Nearly everything that I use. FOSS and self-hosting is a massive part of my computing experience.
I love reading about people enjoying / exploring self-hosting stuff.
I struggle when people advocate "just self-host it", without giving due consideration to the costs, risks, security considerations, and so on.
I know that I've posted this a few times now, but this discussion seems to pop up quite a lot. So:
@neil Neil is absolutely spot on and we need to talk about the politics of this. Telling people to "just self-host" to escape surveillance capitalism is the exact same tactic as telling people to "calculate your carbon footprint" to stop climate change.
It individualizes a systemic, corporate failure.
Privacy and digital safety shouldn't be luxury goods reserved for cis-white-male engineers with unmetered fiber connections, rack-mount servers along with free time and financial stability to pull it off. When our response to the collapse of digital rights is "run your own infrastructure," we are engaging in digital redlining. The solution to predatory data brokering isn't forcing single mothers working two jobs to learn Kubernetes; the solution is ruthlessly regulating the data brokers out of existence.
