I agree this is the future, however I worry big players like Apple/Google hop on the bandwagon the second it gets popular and negate a lot of the momentum. Having it be a cottage industry for...
I agree this is the future, however I worry big players like Apple/Google hop on the bandwagon the second it gets popular and negate a lot of the momentum.
Having it be a cottage industry for techies indefinitely seems preferrable than trying to hit mass market.
One blind spot I see is backups. I'd love to see a proper decentralized backup solution for these decentralized solutions, but the potential for abuse is high. If there's a good one out there (no cryptocurrencies) which has better user-friendliness than having to set up peering arangements I'm all ears.
In general I like the idea of decentralized net that makes better use, hypothetically, of all the ISP pipes for types of content which don't require real-time responsiveness. I guess Freenet is...
In general I like the idea of decentralized net that makes better use, hypothetically, of all the ISP pipes for types of content which don't require real-time responsiveness. I guess Freenet is one of these? Any experience with that, or anything similar?
The main issue I see is that hosting a node where you don't control the content could be legally hazardous, as from the look of it, I can imagine the primary use case would be.. dubious. And I kind of fall in the bucket of being risk averse when it comes to things that are technically cool.
As someone who has recently started self-hosting a lot of stuff again, I am not at all inclined to think that this is the future. For a technical community who like to tinker, own their data, and...
As someone who has recently started self-hosting a lot of stuff again, I am not at all inclined to think that this is the future. For a technical community who like to tinker, own their data, and try out new and exciting tools/technologies, self-hosting will become more and more common. It's fun for a certain type of person. But I can't imagine a single member of my immediate or extended family who would be at all interested in trying to do any of this themselves. Before I started working back in tech again, I knew one person who also self-hosted services.
Ordinary people just don't want to think about this stuff. There's a very good reason why one of Squarespace's biggest selling points in all of its adverts is that there is nothing to program, nothing to update, and nothing to monitor. Self-hosting anything is rarely a fire-and-forget situation. You need to stay alert for updates and security patches, you need to keep the underlying OS updated and secure, you need to adjust your setup to your own personal needs and quirks. All of the services that self-hosting is designed to replace just take away that necessity. Yes at the expense of data ownership, and yes at the expense of having to use a paradigm someone else has designed. But I would be willing to bet that the self-hosted revolution never occurs, simply because the vast majority of people are more than happy to just use the default services that come installed with their phone or whatever.
Add to that the network effect of knowing that the people around you are using the same services. If you don't know how to do something, you can just ask your friend, rather than having to figure out how to search online to find the correct answer. We've all (I assume) experienced hostile forums and communities where if you're not doing something The Right Way, then you're not welcome and will not get a helpful answer. Can you imagine anyone that isn't avidly interested in problem solving trying to navigate such toxicity, when a hassle- and cost-free not only exists but is readily available?
For all of that, I am truly excited by the prospect of self-hosting becoming easier, and more and more advanced options becoming available. I'm really enjoying playing with Docker and gradually replacing some of the applications I use with self-hosted alternatives. There is a huge amount of satisfaction in identifying a problem, and building/hosting a solution for it myself. Even the process of tinkering to get it to function in the first place is part of the fun. So for people like me who enjoy this kind of thing, self-hosting definitely is going to be the future. But I don't think it will ever become mainstream.
To be completely frank, I think that there's a lot of web developers who do not understand their audience. I suspect it might be developers and programmers as a whole, but web devs tend to be the...
To be completely frank, I think that there's a lot of web developers who do not understand their audience. I suspect it might be developers and programmers as a whole, but web devs tend to be the loudest ones and they're the ones I see examples of the most.
One thing I have seen a lot of is that web developers are expecting PWAs to suddenly "take off", presumably to replace desktop applications altogether. And they're always blaming some party or another for the reason why it doesn't happen. But the truth of the matter is that PWAs are kind of pointless. Most of them are just the web apps they can already access without needing to "install" anything, and the installation process just makes their system's menus even more cluttered. Most of the studies I've seen about them put the cart before the horse; they tout things like "users who installed were n% more engaged than people who use the website!" That's self-evident; only the people who are heavily engaged would be likely to install the app to begin with.
I agree this is the future, however I worry big players like Apple/Google hop on the bandwagon the second it gets popular and negate a lot of the momentum.
Having it be a cottage industry for techies indefinitely seems preferrable than trying to hit mass market.
One blind spot I see is backups. I'd love to see a proper decentralized backup solution for these decentralized solutions, but the potential for abuse is high. If there's a good one out there (no cryptocurrencies) which has better user-friendliness than having to set up peering arangements I'm all ears.
In general I like the idea of decentralized net that makes better use, hypothetically, of all the ISP pipes for types of content which don't require real-time responsiveness. I guess Freenet is one of these? Any experience with that, or anything similar?
The main issue I see is that hosting a node where you don't control the content could be legally hazardous, as from the look of it, I can imagine the primary use case would be.. dubious. And I kind of fall in the bucket of being risk averse when it comes to things that are technically cool.
As someone who has recently started self-hosting a lot of stuff again, I am not at all inclined to think that this is the future. For a technical community who like to tinker, own their data, and try out new and exciting tools/technologies, self-hosting will become more and more common. It's fun for a certain type of person. But I can't imagine a single member of my immediate or extended family who would be at all interested in trying to do any of this themselves. Before I started working back in tech again, I knew one person who also self-hosted services.
Ordinary people just don't want to think about this stuff. There's a very good reason why one of Squarespace's biggest selling points in all of its adverts is that there is nothing to program, nothing to update, and nothing to monitor. Self-hosting anything is rarely a fire-and-forget situation. You need to stay alert for updates and security patches, you need to keep the underlying OS updated and secure, you need to adjust your setup to your own personal needs and quirks. All of the services that self-hosting is designed to replace just take away that necessity. Yes at the expense of data ownership, and yes at the expense of having to use a paradigm someone else has designed. But I would be willing to bet that the self-hosted revolution never occurs, simply because the vast majority of people are more than happy to just use the default services that come installed with their phone or whatever.
Add to that the network effect of knowing that the people around you are using the same services. If you don't know how to do something, you can just ask your friend, rather than having to figure out how to search online to find the correct answer. We've all (I assume) experienced hostile forums and communities where if you're not doing something The Right Way, then you're not welcome and will not get a helpful answer. Can you imagine anyone that isn't avidly interested in problem solving trying to navigate such toxicity, when a hassle- and cost-free not only exists but is readily available?
For all of that, I am truly excited by the prospect of self-hosting becoming easier, and more and more advanced options becoming available. I'm really enjoying playing with Docker and gradually replacing some of the applications I use with self-hosted alternatives. There is a huge amount of satisfaction in identifying a problem, and building/hosting a solution for it myself. Even the process of tinkering to get it to function in the first place is part of the fun. So for people like me who enjoy this kind of thing, self-hosting definitely is going to be the future. But I don't think it will ever become mainstream.
To be completely frank, I think that there's a lot of web developers who do not understand their audience. I suspect it might be developers and programmers as a whole, but web devs tend to be the loudest ones and they're the ones I see examples of the most.
One thing I have seen a lot of is that web developers are expecting PWAs to suddenly "take off", presumably to replace desktop applications altogether. And they're always blaming some party or another for the reason why it doesn't happen. But the truth of the matter is that PWAs are kind of pointless. Most of them are just the web apps they can already access without needing to "install" anything, and the installation process just makes their system's menus even more cluttered. Most of the studies I've seen about them put the cart before the horse; they tout things like "users who installed were n% more engaged than people who use the website!" That's self-evident; only the people who are heavily engaged would be likely to install the app to begin with.