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rel_ic commented on The future is not self-hosted   drewlyton.com/story/the-f... · Posted by u/drew_lytle
bigstrat2003 · a month ago
> As a public institution you, the citizen, own it.

Nominally, yes. In terms of that meaning anything, no. The benefit of ownership is not exclusivity, but control. If the library doesn't have a book (or other piece of media, of course), I have no power to influence them to get it despite that theoretical ownership. If the librarian decides a book is offensive and removes it from the collection, I have no power to influence them to keep it. I have to live with someone else's decisions about what the library does and does not contain, just like with a commercial service. So my nominal ownership really means nothing at all.

rel_ic · a month ago
You should go talk to your librarians, you can totally influence all these things!
rel_ic commented on The future is not self-hosted   drewlyton.com/story/the-f... · Posted by u/drew_lytle
deathanatos · a month ago
The author mostly just hand waves away self-hosting. There's an analogy that compares it to suburbia, but unlike the suburbs where you have to drive 40 minutes to get anywhere interesting, … an Internet hosted service is just as accessible, anywhere. It's a vapid analogy.

The only substantive argument I can see is that the technology is immature:

> Well...without exposing our services to the public internet and forcing our friends to signup for our weird app

Which, yeah, of course the tech is, there's only like a dozen people doing this. The exact hurdle named is hardly insurmountable: in the standards, OIDC overcomes this¹, or guest links. I don't want my family signing up for my weird app either.

One of the other big hurdles is that ISPs like to sell "Internet access", but only deliver half the deal. If you're not getting IPv6 connectivity in the year 2025, I'm sorry, that's a crippled product that your ISP was defunct and didn't properly inform you of when they sold it. (It's a lot easier to self-host on the v6 Internet. Some of my personal services are v6 only b/c of that, and that it works well enough in all but the most extreme or temporary locations.)

(¹but the half-baked OIDC implementations out there might require you to pre-register your app with them. That, rightly, might be a PITA.)

rel_ic · a month ago
I totally agree. I see this "people don't want to do hard stuff" argument used all over - completely disregarding tens of thousands of years of people doing hard stuff.

It comes off to me as the author not wanting to do the hard stuff of working towards their values. Just kind of defeatist and trying to make a splash but leaning on a pretty weak premise.

rel_ic commented on The future is not self-hosted   drewlyton.com/story/the-f... · Posted by u/drew_lytle
nine_k · a month ago
How come that a public library, one of the earliest examples of centralized information infrastructure, is not an example of outsourcing and relinquishing control? Instead of your own (small) books collection you get to use some external (huge) book collection. But now you only can borrow a physical book, or some recorded media. You have to return it, and making a copy for personal use only is still a bit problematic.

Either you own and control something, or you do not, there's no third option. A best, you can outsource your stuff piecewise: run your own software on a cloud VM, or bring your own furniture into a rented apartment, or give a valet the keys to the car you own for parking, etc. But there's always some relinquishing of control in exchange to some other aspect of efficiency / comfort.

It's also easy to mistake what most people want for what everyone wants, and miss an important market.

rel_ic · a month ago
> Either you own and control something, or you do not, there's no third option.

I think there's a full spectrum you're missing. You can own something with other people, and your level of control can be continuous, not discrete & binary. For example, my public library is funded by my local government, which I can influence with lobbying and voting. I can join the board of the library, and I can just go and talk to the librarians in charge to influence their decisions.

In an individualist consumerist mindset things are pretty stark : full self-hosting or full submission. If you reject that mindset there are many more options.

rel_ic commented on An open letter from educators who refuse the call to adopt GenAI in education   openletter.earth/an-open-... · Posted by u/mathgenius
monero-xmr · 2 months ago
Water? I didn’t realize that when you use water it disappears from the universe, or even from earth, or even from the local ecosystem
rel_ic · 2 months ago
Energy doesn't disappear, but obviously it moves from useful forms to unuseful forms. Same with water. Your sarcasm just comes off as naive arrogance.
rel_ic commented on Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system   newyorker.com/news/annals... · Posted by u/dmazin
rel_ic · 2 months ago
Renewable energy is great, but we're not replacing fossil fuels with it, we're just adding more energy usage. And our energy usage is destroying the environment.

Don't let these advancements in solar make you think things are getting better. We need to reduce fossil fuel usage, not just increase solar usage.

https://pocketcasts.com/podcasts/b3b696c0-226d-0137-f265-1d2...

rel_ic commented on Meta: Shut down your invasive AI Discover feed   mozillafoundation.org/en/... · Posted by u/speckx
8fingerlouie · 3 months ago
Besides that, pretty much everything “after school” is being arranged over Facebook, as well as community “blogs”, newsletters etc.

Facebook solves this problem extremely well. I still remember the “good old days” of poorly managed Wordpress sites, shared Google calendars, mailing lists, and texts, and I’m not particularly keen on going back to that.

The sad truth is that there is nothing on the market today that solves this problem in a combined package, and you can add discoverability to the mix. If you’re interested in X you can search for it on Facebook and 9/10 times you’ll find what you’re looking for, from menus for restaurants to opening hours. Yes, Google does this as well but somehow people (here) are more aware of the feature on Facebook.

rel_ic · 3 months ago
Yeah, it's a tradeoff. I don't mean to be glib, but on one side we have a loneliness epidemic, mass misinformation campaigns, and centralized control, and on the other side we have better information about restaurants, easier after-school arrangements, and community blogs. I really don't mean to say that the benefits are not real benefits - they are! I just think their price is way too high.
rel_ic commented on Meta: Shut down your invasive AI Discover feed   mozillafoundation.org/en/... · Posted by u/speckx
WolfeReader · 3 months ago
Actually it is very realistic to stop using Meta products - I've done it. And the more people stop, the less effective the network effect becomes.
rel_ic · 3 months ago
People in my community are bragging about getting off social media - it's like a new status symbol around here.
rel_ic commented on Meta: Shut down your invasive AI Discover feed   mozillafoundation.org/en/... · Posted by u/speckx
kennywinker · 3 months ago
Network effects have most people stuck on at least one of them. If all your friends use instagram/fb/whatsapp to keep in touch / make plans, leaving the platform is akin to cutting ties with your community.

Which is why there is a role for gov in regulating privacy and mandating interop between platforms. Asking people to “just stop using them” isn’t a realistic ask.

rel_ic · 3 months ago
I want to push back on this narrative - I got off facebook and now my friends just text me instead. A few of my friends also got off facebook. Sometimes I can't see a facebook event so I text a friend asking for details. It's fine.
rel_ic commented on My AI skeptic friends are all nuts   fly.io/blog/youre-all-nut... · Posted by u/tabletcorry
GardenLetter27 · 3 months ago
What environmental cost? The uranium is going to decay on its own anyway, we might as well use that energy for useful things.

Maybe LLMs will help lead to a breakthrough in nuclear fusion or battery research.

Degrowth is the philosophy of poverty, and a poverty of philosophy.

rel_ic · 3 months ago
This mindset is cancerous
rel_ic commented on My AI skeptic friends are all nuts   fly.io/blog/youre-all-nut... · Posted by u/tabletcorry
Ragnarork · 3 months ago
It's interesting also how these takes consistently ignore spectacularly the environmental cost of these as well.

I'm a bit on the fence myself, as I think it's very harmful, but I can also see ways it can be useful. But it's absolutely mindblowing how this is nearly always completely out of the discussion even though our current way of living and powering things is on a timer and we still haven't addressed it as a whole.

rel_ic · 3 months ago
Thanks for posting this! I was also flabbergasted and it's nice to see at least one mention of the huge environmental impact!

u/rel_ic

KarmaCake day68July 9, 2024View Original