I'm coming to the conclusion that community-owned and operated small clouds (co-ops) with easy onramps for self-hosting open source services like mail, storage, and VPN are the only way forward.
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@mttaggart @HolosSocial i disagree with making it 100% turbo decentralized and exist kind of like a cloud in the middle of nowhere because that has been tried in stuff like matrix and others and it just has led to a lot of different issues, mostly because of how media proxies work and how it entirely destroys any sense of moderation.
i still think it is a good idea to create something more akin to... towns, that specific people with enough time can dedicate their resources to mantaining, so that other people can join freely and adhere to existing rules, kind of like the fediverse, but removing the "black box" element of "you just join and it just works" even though it's a federated system
i think the way through is not unification, but intentional separation of the presentation and rules and structure of each instance, but total unification of the protocol and basics so that people can choose their own client and technology can be simplified to them
i think that... there's also a nomenclature issue in how we manage this kind of thing, right? where we call it "the fediverse" and "federated" and "decentralized" on "servers" that "speak activitypub" and use the "mastodon api" for the "client", it's just very confusing when you frame it as open source tech specifications when it should be treated instead with analogies and metaphors, which is how the early days of personal widespread computing got their way with letting people understand how the underlying tech works: the wallpaper, the files, the desktop, the recycle bin... all of these are analogs for real life objects
@mttaggart @HolosSocial oh and it might be a good idea to make each town intentionally small, you also want to avoid towns to grow so big they end up "centralizing" the network and making specific instances have more power than the rest
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@mttaggart @HolosSocial oh and it might be a good idea to make each town intentionally small, you also want to avoid towns to grow so big they end up "centralizing" the network and making specific instances have more power than the rest
@nelson @HolosSocial I encourage you to read the rest of this thread discussing all the pros and cons of small scales. I tend to agree but it is not without risk.
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@nelson @HolosSocial I encourage you to read the rest of this thread discussing all the pros and cons of small scales. I tend to agree but it is not without risk.
@mttaggart @HolosSocial it's a very worthwhile read, thanks for engaging in conversation! i literally dedicate my life to this kind of thing, so it's awesome to read from others.
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I'm coming to the conclusion that community-owned and operated small clouds (co-ops) with easy onramps for self-hosting open source services like mail, storage, and VPN are the only way forward. Every corpo service is eventually going to make you ashamed to use it.
@mttaggart are there any working examples of this? I would happily put my money into smaller more distributed clouds. Especially as I think it would help move "cloud native" tooling from a term we use to describe a handful of proprietary dashboards to something more fundamental and shared.
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I'm coming to the conclusion that community-owned and operated small clouds (co-ops) with easy onramps for self-hosting open source services like mail, storage, and VPN are the only way forward. Every corpo service is eventually going to make you ashamed to use it.
@mttaggart
I'd sign up for that!Although I worry that the big corporate services would block or shadowban the independents.
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@brahms Thanks! But also, I will just say it's absolutely brutal out there. eBay, Amazon refurb, Savemyserver, and GovDeals (US) are probably the best bets.
@mttaggart @brahms Craigslist and Facebook marketplace too, depending on where you live (I’m within 2 hours of a major metro that always has somebody selling off-lease micro desktops at rock bottom prices)
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@mttaggart @brahms Craigslist and Facebook marketplace too, depending on where you live (I’m within 2 hours of a major metro that always has somebody selling off-lease micro desktops at rock bottom prices)
@mttaggart @brahms my personal opinion is biased, but I like old CAD & developer tower workstations. You can frequently get them with Xeon server processors (and I’m sure AMD equivalents, but I last bought nearly a decade ago), and the cooling is set up to be effective without being a menace on/below someone’s desk, plus you can fit a respectable number of 3.5” drives in them. OTOH, if you wanna play with clusters, I’d look at micro desktops or laptops (built in UPS), cooling them can be more situational, and you’re probably limited to fewer & lower capacity internal drives, or using external USB drives.
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@mttaggart @brahms Craigslist and Facebook marketplace too, depending on where you live (I’m within 2 hours of a major metro that always has somebody selling off-lease micro desktops at rock bottom prices)
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@mttaggart @brahms TBF, I’m going to get there, finally deleted my account last month, and it was officially nonrecoverable a week ago.
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@mttaggart @brahms TBF, I’m going to get there, finally deleted my account last month, and it was officially nonrecoverable a week ago.
@mttaggart @brahms I think the experience there was better than craigslist, but I hate how it choked out CL via network effects.
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I'm coming to the conclusion that community-owned and operated small clouds (co-ops) with easy onramps for self-hosting open source services like mail, storage, and VPN are the only way forward. Every corpo service is eventually going to make you ashamed to use it.
@mttaggart When I heard about Mullvad's (co-owner, not CEO) I uttered a bunch of things unfit for polite company. The rule now seems to be, if it's a standard corporation, you can't trust them.
As annoying as that is, for those of us with a technical background, big tech's complete letdown of its customer base presents a real opportunity. People are hungry for integrity and there's a lack of good options.
The obstacles for an operator seem to be the high cost of hosting vs what people are willing to pay for things they're used to getting for "free." I wouldn't try to host a paid service on a residential connection, but with enough people involved, there could be a way forward to rack space.
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@mttaggart @HolosSocial i disagree with making it 100% turbo decentralized and exist kind of like a cloud in the middle of nowhere because that has been tried in stuff like matrix and others and it just has led to a lot of different issues, mostly because of how media proxies work and how it entirely destroys any sense of moderation.
i still think it is a good idea to create something more akin to... towns, that specific people with enough time can dedicate their resources to mantaining, so that other people can join freely and adhere to existing rules, kind of like the fediverse, but removing the "black box" element of "you just join and it just works" even though it's a federated system
i think the way through is not unification, but intentional separation of the presentation and rules and structure of each instance, but total unification of the protocol and basics so that people can choose their own client and technology can be simplified to them
i think that... there's also a nomenclature issue in how we manage this kind of thing, right? where we call it "the fediverse" and "federated" and "decentralized" on "servers" that "speak activitypub" and use the "mastodon api" for the "client", it's just very confusing when you frame it as open source tech specifications when it should be treated instead with analogies and metaphors, which is how the early days of personal widespread computing got their way with letting people understand how the underlying tech works: the wallpaper, the files, the desktop, the recycle bin... all of these are analogs for real life objects
@nelson@wetdry.world @mttaggart@infosec.exchange @HolosSocial@mastodon.social i think the way atproto does this is done very nicely, its very easy for non technical users
now it is rather decentralized right now as most people aren't too aware of the fact they can run their own pds. but thats not really a fault of the protocol -
I'm coming to the conclusion that community-owned and operated small clouds (co-ops) with easy onramps for self-hosting open source services like mail, storage, and VPN are the only way forward. Every corpo service is eventually going to make you ashamed to use it.
@mttaggart @zackwhittaker
I'm spending my efforts in this direction, too. -
Not for nothing but I've written a very well-regarded guide on home labs if you want to get started.
@mttaggart how does one access the book to download, it again when they purchased it a year ago or so and the download link in the email is not working anymore?
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@mttaggart @brahms my personal opinion is biased, but I like old CAD & developer tower workstations. You can frequently get them with Xeon server processors (and I’m sure AMD equivalents, but I last bought nearly a decade ago), and the cooling is set up to be effective without being a menace on/below someone’s desk, plus you can fit a respectable number of 3.5” drives in them. OTOH, if you wanna play with clusters, I’d look at micro desktops or laptops (built in UPS), cooling them can be more situational, and you’re probably limited to fewer & lower capacity internal drives, or using external USB drives.
@ajn142 @mttaggart @brahms I've bought two M720q (16GB, 256GB M.2 + 256 SATA each) as a base for HA proxmox cluster. Power consumption is minimal and it even runs some small LLM for weather-json-to-human-text. Those were probably under 100€ each.
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@ajn142 @mttaggart @brahms I've bought two M720q (16GB, 256GB M.2 + 256 SATA each) as a base for HA proxmox cluster. Power consumption is minimal and it even runs some small LLM for weather-json-to-human-text. Those were probably under 100€ each.
(and yes, that's a shoe rack with thin plywood as a shelf
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I'm coming to the conclusion that community-owned and operated small clouds (co-ops) with easy onramps for self-hosting open source services like mail, storage, and VPN are the only way forward. Every corpo service is eventually going to make you ashamed to use it.
@mttaggart Or be acquired by someone who'll do that. Eg. Linode being absorbed by CloudFlare.
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I'm coming to the conclusion that community-owned and operated small clouds (co-ops) with easy onramps for self-hosting open source services like mail, storage, and VPN are the only way forward. Every corpo service is eventually going to make you ashamed to use it.
Interesting approach. Are there concepts available for a secure, operable, reisilient decentrralized mail system? Which can be installed an run without having a master degree in IT? Some kind of fedi-mail?
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@mttaggart I think email especially, without that level of resiliency, is basically malpractice
@delta_vee @mttaggart
do large-scale email servers (gmail, etc) still retry after failed delivery like the smaller ones do? -
@falk_ That's true, but indefinite support may be an unreasonable expectation. A reasonable expectation may be an exit agreement.
@mttaggart @falk_
unfortunately, "indefinite" is the only reasonable expectation in terms of email addresses
you could have everyone bring their own domain tho
