jiaosdjf
The cloud space is absurd, we've sat by for 2 decades
while the likes of AWS define every aspect of deployment,
auth, even containerisation.Containerisation was supposed
to mean host anywhere, literally redeploy a complex set of
services and their connections on any cloud provider at
the drop of a hat. That is what a f**ing shipping
container is, you rock up to any port in the world and the
same container is lifted by any crane onto any ship or
truck.Amazon, Google, Microsoft - these people have sold
vendor lock-in to the very segment of tech society that
should have been fighting it tooth and nail. 20 years ago
you ftp'd some PHP files and it just worked, now you have
to figure out 20 IAM profiles and shit your files across
buckets because everything must be 1000000x scalable out
of the box.No joke I was building a static firebase site
the other day and just wanted a simple way to password
protect it (like http auth) for staging so my client could
see it - of all the useless shit firebase tries to lock
you into they can't even do something as simple as basic
http auth without a shit show and spinning up a cloud run
instance or something to check a static password.Yes we
100% need fix hosting, everything should be portable,
simple, generic.
|
> Crabber
I think a lot of programmers in the industry just
follow trends, they don't really understand the
benefits and drawbacks of the technology they are
using.I have coworkers who host personal projects for
their own use and put them in docker, set up CI
pipelines, host them on a cloud service, use an
enterprise level database on the backend. One of my
coworkers made a completely static portfolio website
with a single page and used react.I don't mean this in
a judgemental way, people are free to use whatever
they like. But it does sadden me that instead of
seeing tools and processes as having certain benefits
and certain overheads it's now just "this is the tool
we use for everything", and therefore "everything now
has this overhead". Where the overhead is performance,
time, complexity.
|
> > ItsYan
I understand your viewpoint because but also have
you considered that your approach adds nothing to
the builder?I don't mean this in a judgemental
way. In your scenario, I spend learning 50
different technologies that I will never use
because they are not hired for. Whereas the
colleague makes 50 different projects, gets
comfortable with the technology and maybe hits an
interesting edge case or two to talk about at
their next interview, if they are lucky.I am
saying this as someone, who has tried to think
about complexity and what not in my projects. But
it turns out that I get a lot more mileage from
practicing deployment with k3s than know what
Dokku and Kamal do and how to deploy the app
directly as a process.
|
> > > Crabber
> In your scenario, I spend learning 50
different technologies that I will never use
because they are not hired forI'm actually
saying the opposite of this. To learn react
you also need to know html, css and
javascript, so I am saying if you need to make
a static website that is just a single page
you may as well just write it in HTML. I am
saying you should use less
technology.Similarly to learn Docker you need
to know bash so you already have the skills to
just skip over docker and deploy your app
directly by running bash commands on a linux
server.The "50 different technologies" is how
I see the flavour-of-the-month cloud platforms
that take something that's relatively simple
(copying code to a server and running a
command to start it) and turning it into a
proprietary cloud platform you now have to
learn. Whereas you could have just learnt how
to deploy software to a linux server instead
and have a skill that was valuable 20 years
ago, is still valuable, and will still be the
way software is fundamentally run in 20 years
time as well I am sure. Meanwhile I have no
idea what Dokku and Kamal even are - I'm sure
they won't last as long as linux and bash
have.
|
> > > > josegonzalez
Dokku maintainer here.I'm sure bash will
outlast me. I do hope to work on Dokku for
another 10/20/40 years, but if there's a
better project out there, I'd be happy to
help users migrate and bow out of the
deployment space.I maintain Dokku for the
folks that don't want to build and
maintain a bespoke deployment process
around docker, and the k3s implementation
uses helm at its core, so users can eject
when Dokku has run its course. I think
there is value in that - maybe not for
everyone, but at least for folks busy with
building product on a budget.That said,
I'm happy to see folks continue to build
new tools and iterate on ideas in this
space. Definitely cool to see how everyone
improves on stuff I - and others - been
working on for the last two decades.
|
> > > opem
I think the gp is saying the exact opposite of
what you gave an example for, and in line with
what you are saying i.e. less technology.one
more thing is you tried both kamal and dokku,
and then made a deliberate choice of sticking
to k3s because suits you the best rather than
making a mindless descision about using k3s,
which most people do!
|
> > willsmith72
> One of my coworkers made a completely static
portfolio website with a single page and used
react.People love hating on react, but I mean this
is pretty common. Raw is fine, but even in a
"static" thing, you'll eventually go "ok now I
want to reuse some text here.." Or have some
common elements with x things shared. So I'm gonna
have to write some hacky imperative JS? Or messy
CSS? And what starts as static very easily becomes
slightly dynamic. I hate overengineering, so if
React were hard to setup or deploy I'd agree (eg
Kube), but the cost-benefit of React makes it
worth it in most cases for me
|
> > > abustamam
Yeah pretty much this. I tend to use Astro but
I think your point still stands.I wanted to
make a basic online agenda in a few different
formats for a Toastmasters club and though I
could have used raw html and css to build it,
but each agenda had slightly different layout
that would have been a lot of copy pasting in
html and lots of room for error.With astro and
react islands it was fairly simple to
implement.
|
> > > > jiaosdjf
I had a similar problem and used 11ty to
build static html from templates and
markdown files. Works great and keeps you
close to the metal
|
> > > > > abustamam
That sounds nifty, I'll check it out!
|
> figassis
I think vendors will do what vendors will do, and you
can choose to buy into that or not. Containers
fullfilled their promise. You can today host anything
yourself easily, with a single command.The problem
comes when developers start building things without
this in mind. I see simple site analytics apps in
github, where the docker compose file is a web os
services and the repo itself is full of init scripts
and the sort. You have redis, mongo, an RDBMS
container, an analytics db, kafka, all the kafka
tooling like bookkeeper, then you have outsourced auth
liek clerk or supabase (when the whole thing is not
just some supabase chimera with edge functions and
whatever else supabase is supposed to run outside your
infra).And the repo description is: simple, anonymous
wesbite analytics.
The entire thing is more complex than the thin you
want to do analytics for.
So you bring that into a cloud, and instead of a
container, you are now advised, but both AWS and your
HN peers that you need to replace each component with
it's cloud version, such as elasticache, AKS, cognito,
firebase, whatever.All of these services as you set
up, trap you into overprovisioning. Your DB needs to
have 3 replicas or you have no guarantees, your auth
needs an entire instance of something running
somewhere or unicorns start dying.By the time you come
out for sunlight your bill could pay your rent. So you
don't self host, you signup for google
analytics.Everytime I find a project on GitHub, the
first thing that makes me close it immediately is
whether it has a docker-compose.yaml and if it's a
single, sane/dumb, low footprint deployment or a
chimera.So self hosting is alive and well, whether
your app is easy to self host, and whether you know
how to use just what you need from cloud vendors are
different questions.
|
> > figassis
sorry for the typos, I didn't actually come back
to grammar check and I'm cringing now
|
> walrus01
If you don't mind me asking a question to better
understand your perspective: Are you old enough to
have personally experienced and built self-hosted
things before the advent of AWS, cloud hosted stuff,
or is your text above (which I do not disagree with in
any way) the point of view of a person who began
working on this stuff in the "cloud-native" era,
post-2012 or around then?I'm thinking from the "20
years ago" it is the first one, so your experience is
even more valuable for those younger persons reading
it because you've seen how things were before the
vendor-lock-in era began.I ask because I've been
seeing an increasing trend of people who've
self-taught themselves Linux/BSD things, grew up in
the cloud-native era, and have now become increasing
dissatisfied with the "Do everything in one vendor
cloud" operations model that they initially learned.
Many are now going the opposite direction and deciding
to self host their own projects at much lower cost and
much less vendor lock-in.
|
> > jiaosdjf
I'm in my 40s, full disclosure I've never worked
in devops 'officially' but have hosted many
personal and commercial projects, worked as a
developer and later product manager. I have run my
own small businesses as well as working for
various corps.In defence of cloud I will say that
back in mid 2000s I did have to buy and rack my
own servers, this was a pain in the ass and I
don't want to ever see and especially hear the
inside of a datacenter again. I'll also say that a
lot of things are much easier and safer today, the
industry has developed a lot of process and
tooling.So the issue isn't necessarily "cloud" but
how large cloud vendors have strategised in their
own best interests to do vendor lock-in,
especially on the lower end of startups that are
obviously open to shipping now and paying later,
and how we have all lapped that up because they do
give generous free-tiers and they do solve some
real problems.
|
> > dgellow
Yeah, self-hosting is definitely having a come
back. Lots of content creators who would have been
evangelizing cloud solutions in the past have been
instead going into the various self hosting rabbit
holes. There is a bit of a pendulum swing. You now
have access to so much information and tooling to
host your own things, it's pretty awesome compared
to what we had before 2010.Not sure how much
impact that will have for companies, that will
likely stay more niche. Companies will still want
to delegate much of the effort to a cloud
provider, but with pressure to have less lock-in
|
> > > jiaosdjf
I've worked for a corp that spent good money
to mirror their entire Salesforce setup
internally on the basis that Salesforce was
expensive, slow, and had all their customer
data and could bring the entire business to
its knees.I've worked for another corp that
spent insane amounts for a CMS that nobody
understood and required a full time engineer
on duty to "unlock" files for the content team
- this company later built a simple CMS that
just stored a title, body and image in a
database because I shit you not: thats 90% of
what they needed from a CMS and to do quick
announcements/news in a mobile app would have
taken weeks longer to develop if they had to
integrate with the real CMS.This was a few
years ago before LLMs btw, so I can only
imagine how crazy it is today
|
> > > huksley
Unfortunately it getting more expensive, as
hosting companies started to rise prices
because of memory costing more
|
> > > > walrus01
Kind of unavoidable now for hosting
companies purchasing new hardware, much as
diesel costs are affecting trucking
companies.Let's say theoretically that a
company decides to buy raw rack
space+power colo and DIY your own router
setup, upstream IP transit connections and
buy their own server hardware... You're
suffering equally from the increase in RAM
costs buying your server hardware much the
same as if you go with a dedicated bare
metal hardware hosting company.
|
> > rcbdev
Every project I've ever worked on - sans two at
IBM post Red Hat acquisition - had legacy style
Javaboxes at the customer's DC or was still
rocking mainframe DB2 stuff. I'm seeing bare-metal
Kubernetes / OpenShift gaining a stronger foothold
though. Rarely, some specific workloads did run on
Azure - never anything critical though.For
context, I do mainly development work for EU
enterprises and the public sector.
|
> > kaydub
I've been doing this pre-2012.There's always been
vendor lock-in. Someone has to implement
technologies to the standards, those are most of
the time commercial interests.Apache vs nginx,
rhel vs debian, spring vs j2ee, etc. etc.I think
it's good for the young crowd to get into
self-hosting. You learn more fundamentals that
way, for sure. But I'm not looking to move stuff
into self-hosted.I get unlimited scalability in
AWS. I can standup and run an app for $0-$5/month
depending on how I want to build it. That app will
have unlimited scalability, redundancy, automated
backups, etc. It's not worth dealing with the
headaches of managing things myself.Most
everything is the way it is today for good reason,
it's just that the youngsters haven't had to learn
those reasons themselves.
|
> > mitchitized
I remember driving to the datacenter to setup my
own servers. I had a fractional T1 to my desk, it
provided a blazing 640k (sometimes all the way up
to an unfathomable 1MB!!1!) of bandwidth and only
cost around $1,300 a month. Good times.That gave
way to hosting providers, like ServerBeach and
Rackspace, where you paid them to setup the server
hardware for you, saving the drive. You still had
to deal with bandwidth, backup, redundancy, etc.
Much easier than before but still a pretty big
hassle.Then the cloud happened. "Come to the
cloud, where everything just magically happens for
you," the salesperson said. So I went. And
discovered that none of my scripts, tools or
knowledge worked there, and had to completely
start over from scratch. FOR EACH VENDOR. Gah.The
ONE thing I will grant cloud providers is that I
can usually automate my way around their
enshittification. They over-complicate things to
an extreme where I do wonder if there is an actual
savings or not, just based on the headaches their
setups can consistently produce.My take is that
your needs pretty much determine which route is
more/less painful. Sometimes you DO need the
redundancy and uptime enough to tolerate the
shenanigans of the vendor, and other times you
just need your own machine to quietly get things
done (without worrying about SLAs or client
expectations).The ultimate question you should be
asking, and there is no right/wrong answer: For
this particular effort, is it more valuable to you
to learn how to do these things by hand, or is the
infrastructure just a means to an end so you can
do something specific?
|
> > > jiaosdjf
Yeah agreed, there are pros and cons but
ultimately we are exchanging control for
convenience.The idea of a hosting provider
that manages all the boilerplate, security
updates etc is not a bad thing. The idea of
being able to spin up another node, have load
balancing etc just work and you didn't even
have to get out of bed - is also not a bad
thing.Where it becomes suspicious is when
Amazon and Google both have their 'own'
databases, which are just different enough to
make it a pain. And yes I know I can spin up
e.g. a Postgres instance on Google or AWS for
not much money, but now I have a
vendor-specific provisioning script. "Just use
Terraform or Pulumi" - even when an LLM
manages this web of corporate enterprise
nonsense it's still unmanageable and everyone
just ends up with a run book of prayers.
|
> > everforward
There's a big gap between hobby self-hosting and
enterprise.Clouds are appealing (note, not
technically better but more appealing) in the
enterprise for numerous reasons. We already have a
contract, I don't have to spend a month with
procurement. Their support is "respected" so "I
asked AWS and they told me to pound sand" is an
acceptable response to a lot of requests. No one
ever got fired for picking AWS. The list goes
on.None of those friction points apply to hobby
hosting, really. IAM is annoying because the
alternative isn't "fill out 7 forms and host 12
meetings to get a new vendor in".You also get less
of the benefits. Low volume SQS can be trivially
replaced, but if you use enough that you're
debating making a whole team to manage Kafka then
paying the cloud tax can look appealing because of
the predictability (your Kafka team might fail,
SQS probably handles larger workloads
currently).At some scale, not having to wait 12
months for the message queuing team to support TLS
for some regulation becomes worth a cloud tax.
|
> ezst
That's why, every time a discussion comes up about
decoupling from the US tech and cloud offering, and
how supposedly the whole world is captive and
incapable without it, I'm like "well, certainly we
should give it a serious try, because we might love a
bit too much what we encounter down the road in terms
of complexity and costs savings."
|
> trueno
yea i also think it's weird that people who aren't
doing work for organizations champion using
aws/gcp/azure.
we've all been around computers for a hot minute,
we've seen stuff that is exciting and fun and easy to
use, and stuff that is not.i occasionally do a bit of
aws and azure deployments for work, everything is
reduced to yaml hell, i think its the most over
convoluted experience ever to do anything and opaque
billing strategies, abstractions, it's just gross. its
hard to be passionate about that stuff.i kind of laugh
when people at my org talk about colocation and
elastic strategies for some podunk reporting app, like
the bare minimum sla 99.9999999% uptime and runs in
regions close to the data and weeks of planning to
have like a stupid crud app that maybe five people.
use. everything has to neatly fit into this one size
fits all cloud strategy the infra/devops team came up
with and they could've just run multiple apps off a
server rack in the office it's literally an internal
tool. or hell they could've just came up with a
desktop app deployment strategy to company devices and
not used any cloud services. feels so boringfeel like
the field of "devops" just kinda threw their hands up
got really weird this past decade, and like you said
just kinda bought into the deployment strats
aws/gcp/azure pulled out of their ass.
|
> tonymet
I agree with part of your complaint, and many cloud
services are deliberate vendor lock in (e.g.
"serverless").But all the cloud vendors offer
containers as a service, where you build your image
locally and run it in a region. Naturally there will
be setup to access networking, IO, gpus etc.so i think
you have some fair claims but you're not making the
best case here.
|
> > bigfudge
Containers as a service are ludicrously expensive
as a way to buy compute though. It's just amazing
how much a poxy 1cpu 1gb instance is on azure.
|
> > > tonymet
Indeed. Convenience has a price. It's the
DoorDash of vcpu
|
> kaydub
We don't need to fix hosting. There's no such thing as
"portable" or "generic" and there never will be. At a
certain point you have to use an implementation of
<thing> and that's going to lock you in.
|
> zelphirkalt
I mean, containers are working fine like that. Choose
any hoster you want, either specifically supporting
docker deployment or bare metal and host your
containers. It's just that many tools come with bad
images or bad documentation on how to configure things
for your domains and needs. That's usually where it
breaks down. Not the container tech in itself. That
one's working fine mostly.
|
> lijok
This is just an incoherent bluster. Calm down.You can
still ftp some PHP files and it will just work - there
are plenty of services that offer that.You don't need
to shit your files across buckets and provision 20 IAM
profiles - noone's forcing you to do that and that is
not how you host a web app.If you're fond of the
ftp-based hosting days, those services are available
and they will happily take your money.
|
> > jiaosdjf
It's not that it has disappeared it's that
vendor-specific cloud has become too normal.And
for the record obviously I'm not advocating for
going back to the dark ages, ftp / php / shared
hosting also had massive issues, my point was that
things were _designed_ to be simple and the model
in your head was simple and close to the metal.If
you're joining an existing project today, or like
OP's problem/solution you just want to self-host
something, maybe even just to evaluate it, it has
become a headache.I've never actually seen a
"real" containerised app, one that was 100%
agnostic and simple to deploy without multiple
exceptions for 3rd party services and so on.
|
> > indigodaddy
Yep, shared hosting might go away one day (altho I
doubt it), but it's not going to be anytime soon
|
KomoD
These guys have been spamming issues in repos trying to
promote this project and no disclosure whatsoever that
they are associated with the
project.https://github.com/search?q=%22cloudinabottle.toml
%22&type=i...
|
> zplizzi
(author here) I'm checking with my team to confirm
these came from us, but if so I apologize for this -
posts like these should come from a real account with
proper disclosure, but also these sorts of requests
feel premature for a project like ours that doesn't
yet have a sizeable user base.
|
> > KomoD
The user was called adl-collab, when it forked
repos to add implementations it made them under a
branch called "andrew".The biggest contributor to
the project in the last 3mo is andrewlaack... and
we can also just take a guess that "adl" in
adl-collab is AnDrewLaak.
|
> > > zplizzi
Yeah, I'll make sure this doesn't continue. To
be clear there were 11 total issues posted;
this was a mistake, not some huge spamming
campaign.
|
> > > ChrisKnott
Possibly andrewlaack's clanker run amok
|
> > > > classified
At least this is more informative than
"Thanks Andrew".
|
> > ferfumarma
You are also characterizing another project that
was open-sourced (sandstorm) and is under active
development as "long abandoned". Open source is
difficult and requires a fair amount of
cheerleading to engage users and make them part of
the community. As a result it's hard to see your
project in a positive light.
|
> > > kentonv
"Long abandoned" is a fair characterization of
Sandstorm.There is a loyal community of
enthusiasts trying to keep it alive, but
realistically not a lot of progress has been
made. (Though, AI has helped them make more
progress lately.)But the original creator of
Sandstorm (me) did indeed abandon it long ago
(sorry).More here:
https://sandstorm.io/news/2024-01-14-move-to-s
andstorm-org
|
> > > > ferfumarma
There is no need to apologize for building
a fantastic tool that was ahead of its
time.But "abandoned" in this contexts
makes it sound like it's dead. Even if
it's factually correct that the original
(very busy) author stepped away and it is
literally/factually true that you
"abandoned it", it is also fairly
misleading.I disfavor maligning open
source projects based on a misleading
framing.
|
> > > Geezus_42
They also called out Sandstorm for requiring
changes to the applications for them to run on
the platform.
|
> > > > ferfumarma
Which is true. There's no issue with
honest criticism, but when it's careless
or disingenuous then it it's a put
reflection on the speaker.
|
> > > > > Geezus_42
Right, I wouldn't have mentioned it if
their own platform didn't apparently
have the same issue.
|
> > > fivestones
I mean, to be honest it does look like
sandstorm development has almost stopped for
the past couple of years...or am I missing
something?
https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm/grap
hs/code-freque...
|
> > > > oceansweep
No, sandstorm was deprecated years ago. I
was building a platform that was similar
to/inspired by sandstorm, and I closely
followed it until its creator deprecated
it. They now work for Cloudflare and
released the 'WorkOS' project a couple
weeks ago through them/for them.
|
> > > > > CharlesW
I believe you mean Cloudflare OS:
https://x.com/KentonVarda/status/20849
90137180590572
|
> > > > kentonv
Current status explained
here:https://sandstorm.io/news/2024-01-14-
move-to-sandstorm-org
|
> > > > ocdtrekkie
Our current work is in the dev branch, we
are preparing for a new release soon.
|
> > sureglymop
Looking at the issues, do I understand it
correctly that you have some way to install
directly from repositories if they contain a
`cloudinabottle.toml` file?If yes, regardless of
who made the issues, that seems like terrible
architecture/design there...
|
> > pjdkoch
Please don't require app cooperation for getting
apps into a bottle. I don't want to have to fight
to get a file in, nor maintain my own fork.
|
> > > indigodaddy
I feel like with the capabilities of AI, I
feel like they should be able to just figure
this out..
|
> > TiredOfLife
> posts like these should come from a real account
with proper disclosureThis line makes me think you
are running a spam campaign and andrew just isn't
part of it
|
> > > y-curious
If this is a spam campaign, it's not a very
effective one. I think you'd do well to apply
Hanlon's Razor here
|
> > > petesergeant
I used to work for this company many years
ago, and it's highly unlikely they're running
a (centrally organized) spamming campaign of
any type. Zack's a good guy and I'm sure he'll
get it taken care of promptly.
|
> mrkeen
It's evidence of bad abstraction if you need everyone
else to make changes and couple themselves directly to
you.If for some reason your services can't speak an
already common language, I think it's on you to add
those shims into your own project.
|
> > fy20
I don't think this approach is bad. The issues are
asking if the project will accept contributions to
add support, not demanding the maintainers add
it.Let's assume that they didn't have these
container restrictions and could just use an
ordinary docker-compose.yml, they'd still probably
want to use something like OAuth2.0 for
centralised login which a lot of these services
won't have.What would be better, making a massive
PR to add support for it, or opening an issue to
discuss it with the maintainer first?
|
> > crabmusket
Co-op Cloud, which has similarities, creates
separate repos for its "packaging recipes".
https://docs.coopcloud.tech/maintainers/catalogue/
|
> walrus01
It's 11 issues total and by one person, and the
project says here in the thread the issue is being
addressed. Please put down the metaphorical pitchforks
and torches.
|
> pkulak
Hardly seems worth the pitchforks.
|
> nicerice
shouldn't we hold back with allegations while there's
a non-0 chance this is just a user wishing their other
services were supported too?
|
> > Retr0id
I checked, it's an Imbue employee (or someone
impersonating one, which seems a bit far fetched).
I could could cite my sources but it feels like
doxxing / drawing too much attention to the
mistake of an individual. My read is that it was a
separate github account that they let an agent
control.
|
> > rtpg
project literally launched yesterday... come on
|
> asdf88990
Disclosure would be nice but 11-12 issues in entire
GitHub is hardly spam.
|
> ball_of_lint
Looks like the account in question is deleted now - do
you have the original username?
|
> edoceo
It's only 11 in the last 48h, on lesser known
projects.
|
> > satvikpendem
11 in 48 hours is way too many and I'd call that
spam.
|
> > > edoceo
Yep, sarcasm is tough via text. Oops. I
should've done /s but it's too late now.
|
> > > doc_ick
Sounds like a fun llm that's "fixing" things.
|
> alexflint
This github search returns just 11 results, and the
issues are more or less reasonable. Doesn't seem that
egregious.
|
> ErroneousBosh
Tell you what though, thank you for providing such a
comprehensive list of cool projects to nerdsnipe me on
a sunday morning!
|
> globular-toast
The person doing this doesn't understand how pull
requests work. The issues all say "I have a version in
my fork". Open a pull request then! That's the whole
point of forks on GitHub. Creating an issue first is
pointless spamming akin to the classic "asking to
ask". Just seems completely out of touch with open
source to me.
|
> > hamandcheese
> Creating an issue first is pointless spamming
akin to the classic "asking to ask"Many projects
disagree with you on this one. It is quite common
to have a policy that forbids PRs without an issue
or discussion first.
|
> > > Sophira
I've never actually seen this. Can you link an
example?
|
> > InsideOutSanta
Some projects require opening an issue first.
|
> grosswait
On the plus side, I learned about some interesting
projects from that GitHub query.
|
> jongjong
It's not spam if it's the first time I heard of it and
it's useful. It shows they care about their project.
This makes me want to try it out even more.Meta and
Google can spam their unsolicited ads to a billion
users but regular people aren't allowed to promote
their own projects on niche forums? This is bs. You're
the problem here. Self-promoting your harmful values.
You're the spammer.
|
> > Groxx
Spam is, rather definitionally, undesired
marketing.If they don't desire it, it's spam for
them. And they rather clearly do not desire
it.(You could also go with the stronger
"unrequested marketing" definition, which makes
this even more "definitely spam". CAN-SPAM rules
define it this way, so that seems fair too)
|
drunner
I think the time for this space is here. The appetite to
depart from subscriptions and loaning your personal data
to ad/ai companies is stronger than ever.Currently, a lot
of this space is docker compose based and simply
inaccessible to so many who may otherwise be interested.
Whether or not it's this project or another, I hope
something gathers enough steam soon to truly break the
barriers to entry.
|
> cube00
> The appetite to depart from subscriptions and
loaning your personal data to ad/ai companies is
stronger than ever.Only on HN, the general public
don't care, they don't even know the name of their web
browser.
|
> > myaccountonhn
General public is weird because everyone, yet no
one, is the general public.Fwiw I've started to
see a shift in many non-tech circles I'm a part
of. Especially when you take the time to explain
the problems. Many do care, they just aren't made
aware of the issues.
|
> > > edoceo
GP typically means middle of the bell-curve.
HN visitors and for sure commenters are at the
edge of that curve...3-sta-nines away.
|
> > noman-land
The general public will do whatever their friends
do. If there was an iPhone charger sized box they
could plug in anywhere and have their own personal
cloud that can interconnect with other personal
clouds, and a celebrity said it was cool to have
one, the general public will do it without giving
it a first thought.
|
> > > mrtesthah
You mean like this?https://freedombox.org/It's
been around since 2010.
|
> > > > diggernet
Why didn't you tell me about this years
ago?
|
> > > > > lupire
Because it's not as conventient or
functional as cloud and they don't pay
me to talk it up.
|
> > > yoz-y
In my experience just telling people to enable
Google / Apple backup for photos is a chore at
5€ a month. And for general public this
covers 90% of their needs.
|
> > > gitowiec
There should be influencers or agitators (as
named correctly) to tell general public what
distro to install, what server to buy and how
block tracking and ads
|
> > mystifyingpoi
Precisely. My uncle has been using the builtin
Samsung web browser for years on his phone, just
because it said "Internet" in the name, and
"Chrome" just wasn't a familiar name to him. Most
people are like this.
|
> > > layer8
I actually prefer the Samsung browser over
Chrome.
|
> > > tonyhart7
and didn't even matters tbhSamsung web browser
uses chromium under the hood
|
> > > > zelphirkalt
Syphoned off a lot more data to Samsung
though, further supporting and enabling
their ugly business practices.
|
> > sevenzero
True, most people get the full ad driven internet
experience and it drives me nuts. Everytime I have
to help other people with computer stuff I almost
get an aneurysm when opening their browser...
|
> > > vonunov
At some point I started just installing
ABP/uBO without even bothering to ask/tell
them, if I had the opportunity. So far my
reads seem to have been correct regarding
whether this would conflict with each person's
typical web use, as I've never heard back
about any trouble.
|
> > xiaoyu2006
Digital rights are indeed important, but only a
small portion of the entire concept of human
rights. I can imagine general public places much
more emphasis on wealth (re-)distribution
policies.A lumberjack may also argue GP don't care
about environment laws if they had timbernews.
|
> spockz
How does being docker compose based make it
inaccessible?Self hosting implies having hardware and
software knowledge to set it up. I agree, having a
meta package that would set the system up as systemd
would be an even lower barrier. But then again, there
are podman commands that do this for you today
anyway.Self hosting could also imply buying a device
that just does this with an additional management
interface for updates. This could be build around a
nuc/nas with above package. It still will require some
knowledge to keep it maintained.Then, you could offer
maintaining them as a service again. Maybe there is
value in that.Update: apparently there is
https://freedombox.org/ which is actually an appliance
for this. Although it is more privacy focused and I
don't see a productivity or photo suite on it.
|
> > creesch
> How does being docker compose based make it
inaccessible?Because it requires people to also
have knowledge about the ins and outs of docker
and docker compose. If we are talking about web
applications it is yet another layer that has been
added over the years. It used to be that you could
fairly easily host most things on a old fashioned
lamp host (I am talking decades ago) and all you
had to know was basic file transferring.Of course,
this was on shared webhosts in a time when VPSes
were not really a thing yet or affordable. But,
even on a VPS setting up a LAMP stack is
relatively straightforward.Once you add modern
dockerized application to that mix you are now
still looking at some sort of ingress to do the
reverse proxy bit. So while it likely will not be
Apache or nginx there will be some sort of layer
there in addition to now having to setup docker
properly (rootless and all that) and then also
making sure your docker compose setup is in
order.It is not difficult *once you know how to*
but it is another layer of knowledge and
experience people need to acquire. That does make
it less accessible for novices.
|
> > > kursus
> you could fairly easily host most things on
a old fashioned lamp host (I am talking
decades ago) and all you had to know was basic
file transferringSetting up and maintaining a
server is easier today than it was decades
ago, A LAMP at this time meant a lot of manual
setup, IaC wasn't a thing, reproducibility
wasn't a goal, versioning was confidential,
documentation was scarce and often outdated,
out of the box security was lower, ties to the
OS were higher. Managing virtual hosts was
clunky, updating OS/PHP was risky. I would not
go back for anything.> having to setup docker
properly (rootless and all that)Rootless being
the proper way to setup Docker is a highly
controversial take. You will mostly get added
complexity and a false sentiment of security
from it.
|
> > > > spockz
Do you have any sources on why rootless is
just false security posturing?
|
> > > > xorcist
> A LAMP at this time meant a lot of
manual setup, IaC wasn't a thing,I'm sorry
but this is just nonsense. LAMP is called
that because it was a very standardized
thing. Pop in a Debian CD and select a
ready made profile for it. There were even
ready made installers for Windows and Mac
if you weren't on an Internet native
operating system.A lot more people got by
using custom bash scripts, but cfengine
exited in the 90s. It's still not honest
to say things were more manual. Take a
look at /r/homelab or somewhere
selfhosters hang out today and look at the
Compose or self hosted K8s stacks people
set up today. That's orders of magnitude
more manual work than just popping in a CD
and selecting LAMP.Yes, those are not the
same thing. Yes, a self hosted stack today
consists of so much more than running PHP
in a web server. But for self hosters, the
amount of work required has objectively
gone through the roof. That's a problem if
your goal is data sovereignty.
|
> > > > > kursus
> op in a Debian CD and select a ready
made profile for it.At the time in
question here tasksel wasn't a thing,
I think merely a concept. It made its
way in Debian installer around 20005
IIRC, right along "one-click installs"
from hosting services mentioned in the
other reply. The whole decade before
that, indeed manual set up was
needed.> at /r/homelab or somewhere
selfhosters hang out today [...]
That's orders of magnitude more manual
workThere is two kinds of
self-hosters, those who aim at
reproducibility and those who don't.
The latter is more fun, the former
gets quickly mandatory when you _rely_
on your homelab.
|
> > > > creesch
> Setting up and maintaining a server is
easier today than it was decades ago, A
LAMP at this time meant a lot of manual
setup, IaC wasn't a thing, reproducibility
wasn't a goal, versioning was
confidential, documentation was scarce and
often outdated, out of the box security
was lower, ties to the OS were higher.
Managing virtual hosts was clunky,
updating OS/PHP was risky. I would not go
back for anything.You are speeding past my
point by a mile or two. With a shared
webhost you get a ready lamp stack. In the
late 90s early 2000s you could fairly
easily get a wide array of software
running that way. All you had to do is
create a database in the hosters control
panel, upload the package and you'd be on
your way. Later in the 2000s one click
installers came along for popular packages
making it even easier. In fact, they are
still around these days making it
extremely easy to install a wide array of
lamp based applications to these
days.There are very few options these days
to get started as easily these days with
modern non lamp tech stacks. The only
thing I am familiar with (other than the
product presented to us in this post) is
pikapods, [which only offers a limited
selection of available
applications](https://www.pikapods.com/app
s). There are a few others, also catalog
based, though they more seem to focus on
deploying on other platforms for you.
Other than that you start to quickly move
to more complex hosting solutions aimed at
business and scaling. Or platforms that
are cloud platforms with all the added
complexity to navigate and figure out
before you can deploy docker containers.
Not to mention ridiculous situation that a
few of the ones I know about have pivoted
to being "agentic compute providers"
whatever that means and certainly will
confuse a novice.
Which means that the "practical" advice
given is often to "just" set up a VPS. And
yes, many VPS providers will provide an
image with docker enabled, but that is
just the start.> Rootless being the proper
way to setup Docker is a highly
controversial take. You will mostly get
added complexity and a false sentiment of
security from it.That, in fact, is another
layer of complexity people will then have
to figure out. Most information I am aware
of these days does claim that it is better
to run containers rootless or at the very
least make sure the user in the container
is non root. The fact that we are both
convinced of the opposite tells you how
confusing it must be for a novice.The
overall point I am trying to make isn't
even about the exact details. It is that
for hosting something these days there is
much more required surrounding knowledge
required before you can get started in
most cases.
|
> > > venusenvy47
I don't like using Docker on a VPS because of
the way it bypasses the firewall rules. It's
such a pain that I avoid it altogether for
anything public.
|
> > > > spockz
Docker doesn't do that on my Fedora
machine, nor on my arch machine. Did I set
some setting somewhere that I forgot
about? I'm also running rootless docker
and podman so that might explain.
|
> > > > > lesostep
Just to clarify: if you "sudo ufw deny
80" and than run a docker container on
80 port, your 80 port would remain
inaccessible (as per ufw rules)?Even
rootless docker usually pierce through
that. Might be some setting in a
podman, thought, never really worked
with that.
|
> > apitman
> Self hosting implies having hardware and
software knowledge to set it upThis is
unfortunately true, which is why I think we need a
different term for turn-key self hosting. I like
indiehosting myself.Indie hosting = owning a car
so you can use it
Self hosting = building a kit car
|
> makeitdouble
At the same time buying compute is more expensive than
ever, and the gap between homemade projects and what's
available online in term of speed, functionality and
LLM capacity is bigger than ever.Building the
equivalent of Google Photos locally wasn't that hard
10 years ago, given enough tolerance for speed and
indexing lag issues. Trying to do the same today will
cost two arms and leg and require a lot more overall
knowledge of what to compose to get the same
result.The dust will settle and we should go back to a
nearer gap in I hope a few years, until the. it might
be a glacier age for self-hosting.
|
> > patrickk
> Building the equivalent of Google Photos locally
wasn't that hard 10 years ago, given enough
tolerance for speed and indexing lag issues.You
could argue it's much easier on the software side,
because self hosting Immich is much easier thanks
for AI assistance with setting it up. If you can
live without the built in facial recognition
feature you don't need particularly beefy
hardware.I find myself taking on far more
ambitious self hosted projects thanks to Claude.
Extending home assistant in various ways,
deploying a "self hosted Spotify", making sure
everything is fully accessible via Tailscale out
of the range of the wifi and so on. Of course the
general population isn't really aware or
interested in most of this.
|
> > > makeitdouble
It's about 3~4 years I haven't used Immich so
it might have evolved a lot since then, but
looking at their current roadmap there is a
ton of features I use everyday in Photos that
won't be there.And it's not to fault Immich,
on the contrary, Photos is one of the rare
Google property where the team is constantly
pushing the envelope.I could combine it with a
bunch of external tools to make do, but it
would be crazy clunky or would need full sync
with Adobe Cloud for instance for the editing
part, while doing all the scanning and
categorizing locally.On AI assist...I'm still
pausing a lot when t comes to home projects
that will be constantly talking to the outside
and hold the stuff that is the most private to
me and my whole family and friends. It helps
me as a research tool, but due to my own
restrictions it won't be magic.
|
> > > > patrickk
> On AI assist...I'm still pausing a lot
when t comes to home projects that will be
constantly talking to the outside and hold
the stuff that is the most private to me
and my whole family and friends.Totally
understand this part. I didn't mean to
give Claude code full access to locally
hosted environments but rather copy back
and forth in your local shell with help
from Claude (error messages, helping to
plan out the installation etc.)
|
> > whateveracct
for self hosted and personal use, compute lasts a
good while though. and in the time you would've
been waiting to time the compute market, you get
to benefit by being less a part of the AI data
dragnet.
|
> > lupire
10 years ago Google Photos already had AutoAwesome
with Hasslehoff Photo bombing.
|
> petra
Small business might care about the cost of
subscriptions if they could get high quality systems
this way.
|
> GZGavinZhao
The biggest difficulty is probably that from my
observation, there's a sharp cutoff line somewhere
between Gen Y and Z where anyone born before that (and
don't work in tech) genuinely have no idea how to
navigate their digital life and gets preyed on by
those subscriptions. And these people are still a
super large portion of the population paying for those
subscriptions.Only Gen Z and later are starting to
care and willing to spend the time and effort to self
host. All the Gen X and Y people that I know of,
including many that are very intelligent and
accomplished in their field, literally have no idea
how to operate a computer outside of watching youtube,
checking emails, and opening Word documents. Ads? They
hate it but have no idea how to disable them. iPhone
running out of storage and iCloud says I can solve
that for $2.99/mo? They would be like IDK what that is
but sure I'll pay that $2.99 if that means I can
record more videos of my kids.I really hate this
situation, and I try my best to help out the folks
around me who I see are getting ripped off (either
they don't know or they know but think that's what it
is). But still, it's really hard to communicate or
teach those people when the skill of operating a
computer has become intuition and human nature to me.
I really can't put these things into words on the fly
that would help them understand :(
|
> > hobofan
> Only Gen Z and later are starting to care and
willing to spend the time and effort to self
host.I'm not sure what you are seeing, but what
I'm seeing is widespread teach illiteracy in Gen Z
outside of their smartphone. Gen Z and younger
mostly grew up with smartphones as their primary
devices and with little contact with a laptop or
desktop computer (and even then confined 99% to
browser usage).
|
> > xiaoyu2006
> Only Gen Z and later are starting to care and
willing to spend the time and effort to self
host.I can't quite confirm that. My younger
siblings' classmates (still high school students,
born >=2010, non tech average people) don't give a
shit on these topics and behave identical to the
Gen X and Y described.
|
> > dom3k
Looking at my younger sister, I'd risk saying it's
the same in all generations. I'll even say more: I
think earlier generations had a general thought of
"computer consists of separate parts; you can buy
them separately and replace if needed / want
better performance", even the less technical ones.
But now everything is a black box (therefore e.g.
why not overspend and always buy a black box from
Apple if that's fashionable now).But maybe that
was kind of related to times and the place - where
I live people needed to be a bit more savvy, so
thought like "why you buy an iPhone if Xiaomi can
do the same 4x cheaper; if you chose the right
model you may even have a good camera too" was
popular even in non-tech circles.But yeah, now
that hardware is a bit more of a commodity and
such tradeoff might give you a bit more adware
with a bit less convenience, maybe it's different.
But the next generation's understanding of
computer/phone as something else than a magical
black box is gone.
|
> > > lupire
If it is fashionable for 20-30 years running
across multiple categories, maybe it's
actually valuable and worthwhile.
|
> > > > dom3k
Yeah it's not my point to say Apple is bad
- their laptops are now without
competition on build quality, battery life
and performance; and iPhone is really
solid, and was probably the only good UX
back in the day. But it's also pricey (and
building antipatterns for repairability
and interconnections other vendors happily
copied later), and back in the dat it was
just natural to be "savvy" - and that
meant understanding how much juice you'll
get with configuring something with that
RAM, HDD vs SDD and whatnot, or that
getting phone with SD slot gives you more
space for your photos, and it didn't
matter it's slower than whatever flash
phone manufacturers are using.Apple
popularised the idea of "just buying a
computer", which took away some
understanding in the common public. It
happened somewhere during my generation,
and it's just ubiquitous in the following
one.
|