I don't think programmers and sysadmins get how much there is to learn and how intimidating it is for normal people to host their own software.
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@Canageek Honestly, I've been working in tech for a dozen years, just starting to get into self-hosting, and it's just iceberg after iceberg of byzantine applications and docs. It's so intimidating and exhausting. It's a layer of the internet that even lots of tech folks never interact with.
@arcanesugar @Canageek Conversely, thanks to years of trial and error, I can handle the networking side, Byzantine though it may be, but I can't program for shit.
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Like I wanted to spin up a private TeamSpeak server and I just enter how many users I want to be on at the same time, pick a name and select what domain name I want from a drop-down list and enter my credit card number and it charges me $3 a month and everything just works
So if you are the sort of person who has a lot of experience hosting things, and wants people to use centralized services left, maybe make a business selling that type of on-demand hosting but for zulip or Matrix or Stout or whatever!
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I don't think programmers and sysadmins get how much there is to learn and how intimidating it is for normal people to host their own software.
For one most of us don't have a computer that is running 24/7, which means we need to rent a server which we have no idea how to go about doing.
And then there's an entire arcane art to running software that can speak to the internet without your server being taken over and used to send spam to half the planet
@Canageek my favorite thing about tech people is how much they expect normal people to know/do. It is staggering how out of touch most of them are. The command line is very scary for most people!!!
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I don't think programmers and sysadmins get how much there is to learn and how intimidating it is for normal people to host their own software.
For one most of us don't have a computer that is running 24/7, which means we need to rent a server which we have no idea how to go about doing.
And then there's an entire arcane art to running software that can speak to the internet without your server being taken over and used to send spam to half the planet
@Canageek I quite agree with what you say. I'm a retired developer and I've written and run various internet services professionally - and I'm aware of gaps in my networking knowledge.
I've set up self hosted services in the past based on my own software (using things like nginx and various databases as components) but I'd hesitate to do it now because of the increased prevalence of scrapers and deliberate attackers.
I would really hesitate to recommend self hosting for normal people. -
I don't think programmers and sysadmins get how much there is to learn and how intimidating it is for normal people to host their own software.
For one most of us don't have a computer that is running 24/7, which means we need to rent a server which we have no idea how to go about doing.
And then there's an entire arcane art to running software that can speak to the internet without your server being taken over and used to send spam to half the planet
@Canageek with no one around to mentor me and growing up with depression didn’t manage to snowball my programming knowledge into anything useful until I was almost 30, bullshit hobby
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@glent I'm skeptical that most of them have ip6 addresses. They really should but whenever I check, especially with budget ISPs they don't...
Also, that's a much faster upload speed than just about anywhere I've ever lived
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So if you are the sort of person who has a lot of experience hosting things, and wants people to use centralized services left, maybe make a business selling that type of on-demand hosting but for zulip or Matrix or Stout or whatever!
@Canageek thanks this is uplifting. I have been coding and setting up all sorts of servers for decades. One forgets that it is something one had to learn just because it was out of curiosity and for the love of it.
There probably are quite a few people trying to make a business in that niche though. I suspect they are hard to find with margins too small to afford much ad-spend.
So for me it would be a question of how to find customers.
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@Canageek thanks this is uplifting. I have been coding and setting up all sorts of servers for decades. One forgets that it is something one had to learn just because it was out of curiosity and for the love of it.
There probably are quite a few people trying to make a business in that niche though. I suspect they are hard to find with margins too small to afford much ad-spend.
So for me it would be a question of how to find customers.
@hc I think a community maintained index would be excellent for that sort of thing, or something similar to what TeamSpeak has where they've got a map of all the TeamSpeak hosting companies and you can just click on the city and find who as a server in that city.
TeamSpeak's map is very out of date, but I was still able to find and pay for a hosting provider with it
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I don't think programmers and sysadmins get how much there is to learn and how intimidating it is for normal people to host their own software.
For one most of us don't have a computer that is running 24/7, which means we need to rent a server which we have no idea how to go about doing.
And then there's an entire arcane art to running software that can speak to the internet without your server being taken over and used to send spam to half the planet
@Canageek my main objection is the amount of my precious time is taken by administering said server. Unless you pay up the yazoo to have someone else do it for you it is a time suck. Basically, I can maybe afford four followers or bankrupt myself.
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@Canageek my main objection is the amount of my precious time is taken by administering said server. Unless you pay up the yazoo to have someone else do it for you it is a time suck. Basically, I can maybe afford four followers or bankrupt myself.
@mildpeach I talked with a friend and she said for a small group (less them 25 people or so?) it should only cost around $5/month for text and voice chat, some file sharing, and some web hosting
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@mildpeach I talked with a friend and she said for a small group (less them 25 people or so?) it should only cost around $5/month for text and voice chat, some file sharing, and some web hosting
@Canageek I had one of those, hence the four follower comment. It was like shouting in a well.
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@Canageek I had one of those, hence the four follower comment. It was like shouting in a well.
@mildpeach Ah this is an existing discord we are all using for weekly movie nights and coordinating D&D night, we just don't want to use discord for that anymore
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@mildpeach Ah this is an existing discord we are all using for weekly movie nights and coordinating D&D night, we just don't want to use discord for that anymore
@Canageek Might I suggest Signal instead for genuine secure group chats (I think you’re smarter about who you invite to the group than Hegseth). And… bonus… you contribute what you want to the Signal Devs.
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@Canageek Might I suggest Signal instead for genuine secure group chats (I think you’re smarter about who you invite to the group than Hegseth). And… bonus… you contribute what you want to the Signal Devs.
@mildpeach We use signal for one on one contains but it doesn't really work for multi-channel group stuff.
Instant message clients should be instant message clients and chat rooms should be chat rooms
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@arcanesugar @Canageek Conversely, thanks to years of trial and error, I can handle the networking side, Byzantine though it may be, but I can't program for shit.
@SteveFoerster @Canageek As someone at the beginning of that journey, it does seem like trial and error is the only way to do it
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