signing into cloud services and downloading apps is just so much easier to do!
This is actually true, but it doesn’t speak to why self hosting is “impossible” and more to how the lack of education around computers have reached an inflection point.
There’s no reason why self hosting should be some bizarre concept; In another reality, we would all have local servers and firewalls that then push our content into the wider internet and perhaps even intranet based notes. Society as a whole would be better if we chose to structure the internet that way instead of handing the keys to the biggest companies on the stock market.
I’ll give this podcast a listen to though, as it might be interesting. I think the reality is that some more docker frontends might help casual users jump into the realm of self hosting – especially be setting up proxy managers and homepage sites (like homarr) that work intuitively that never requires you to enter ports and IPs (though fearing that is also an education problem, not a problem with the concept itself.)
If you want self-hosting for everyone, then I suspect you’re gonna have something like a console – a self-contained box that requires virtually no configuration.
So something like a Synology NAS, I guess.
I suppose that that’s an “appliance-like computer” though I was thinking more of general-purpose hardware that takes software modules.
Like, think of how you install a game on a console. Maybe you set up your account at the beginning and plonk in a wireless password, but beyond that, there’s no further essential configuration for the thing to work. Same kind of idea. You get box, do initial minimal setup. After that, you install software modules, and they have no more configuration involved.
If more configuration is required, then it’s just not going to be something sufficiently accessible for everyone to use.
That’s probably not what the typical user on this community is looking for, but I think that that’s probably what would be required if one wants everyone in the public to be able to self-host.
There’s no reason why self hosting should be some bizarre concept; In another reality, we would all have local servers
In the late 2000s, Opera had a very interesting product called “Opera Unite”. It was essentially a self-hosting platform built into the web browser. You could use it to chat, host a website, share photos, share files (and let other people share files with you), and a few other things. It had a guest book called “the fridge” where people could leave you post it notes.
They’d give you a subdomain which would either connect to it directly (if your network allows UPnP or you forwarded the port), otherwise they’d proxy it via their servers.
Basically, it was a super simple solution to create a decentralized web. The goal was to let everyone own their own data in a way that anyone could understand, without having to know anything about server hosting. Instead of just browsing the web, you could contribute to it at the same time.
It worked surprisingly well, but never caught on with the general public, and they killed it off about three years later.
Oh you summer child (I upvoted, but won’t waste an hour of my life listening to random internet stuff). I don’t think it’s lack of education, in this world it’s very possible to educate yourself, it’s a lack of understanding (due to misinformation and corporate sponsored laziness) the implications of that easy click, or of what others can get without your consent. Privacy isn’t dead, it’s just now mostly for the rich.
Condescension is a terrible way to kindle enthusiasm. C’mon, if you know this shit, extend a hand to those who don’t.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters CGNAT Carrier-Grade NAT DNS Domain Name Service/System HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web IP Internet Protocol NAS Network-Attached Storage NAT Network Address Translation
5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 6 acronyms.
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@spaduf@slrpnk.net That’s really nice, I actually use Obsidian myself for note taking and I can say that I will never go back to normal note taking software. The internet and software needs to change to be for the user, for if the software doesn’t exist in the future. We never know if a service will go but we shouldn’t loose everything.
Love Obsidian and linked notes in general. The potential utility there is insane but it’s such a steep learning curve. I really think that in the not too distant future they’ll be teaching it in schools.
Proprietary software should NOT be taught in schools! We already have way too much of that
