And then I read about someone’s smart bed that got stuck in an upright position on heat mode because of the outage. Makes me feel like all that time sourcing devices that run locally was worth it.
Are we just digital preppers?
Edit: I get it, you aren’t preppers, I’m sorry I said that.
From reading your comments I have gathered that you simply want to be ready (not prepared!) for when a free service becomes paid or they shut something down that you use or you simply don’t like the idea of the gubbermint or the corporations being able to look though your data.
Many of you seem aware that your concerns are considered far fetched or like non issues by the average person.
well you are preppers, I’m sorry you had to find out this way.
I hate the connotation that anyone who self hosts is a “prepper”, because it implies the bad thing hasn’t happened yet.
We are losing. Self hosting is just clawing back what little we can.
I agree with this. I am not self hosting for some end of days apocalypse (except I do have a whole house generator and am looking into off grid electricity, though I really missed the boat on that one haha).
It’s because literally all of these services are parasites run by scumbags. I don’t want anything to do with them. I use Jellyfin/komga because I don’t want my watch/read history sold.
I seek out local only iot devices and isolate them to a physical switch that does not have internet access, only a physical link to the pfsense box where there is an isolated vlan on their own subnet with a hard rule in the firewall to block any outbound traffic. I can still view things like cameras and home assistant remotely via headscale or even homebridge (with some added risk) but not nearly as much risk as the plethora of security issues created by lazy iot firmware developers who rarely, if ever, update their shit. But further than the massive security risks created by 500 iot devices are the massive amounts of profiling data.
I run my own apps like nextcloud and local llms because I don’t trust companies like openai and Google not to suddenly shutter products or drastically change the tos once I’ve integrated them into my workflow (plus tons of data harvesting).
I refuse to use apps and run local proxies to view paywalled news articles because I either don’t trust websites that offer this service or they capitulate to everyone that sends a cease and desist (see: 12ft.io).
Etc etc etc
It’s inescapable in the modern age and I’m so goddamn sick of it. I was talking to a family member the other day and they were signing their literal fucking infant up for daycare. The daycare is owned by private equity, because of fucking course it is. Group homes for the disabled, emergency rooms, drug and alcohol rehabs, etc have been bought up by those scum in increasing numbers over the past decade with the anticipated results (people dying, worsening outcomes, etc) so why wouldn’t they sink their disgusting claws into child and infant care?
The daycare (bright horizons, fuck them) will only send updates to parents via a proprietary app, of fucking course. Updates include pictures of their child, diaper changes, feedings, play, social time, developmental milestones, etc. both parents work so they’re sending the kid there 40 hours, it will be a lot of data - daily updates. The TOS is disgusting. Of course the company owns all the data, of course they can and will share it with third parties, of course they collect as much personal info as possible, and of course they do the bare minimum in terms of cybersecurity. Anything to drive up profits, even if it means exploiting the children you’re supposed to be serving and educating.
The worst part is that when I point this out, when I point out that COPPA exists and they can insist that an account not be made because their child is under 13 and demand an alternative, I look like the pain the ass. they know that ultimately the daycare can be like “fuck you, the app is policy, do it or no pictures”. everyone just wants it to be easy and wants pictures of their kid. And we’re so indoctrinated by tech at this point to just click “agree” and not think about it. It just fucking sucks. No one wants to be the martyr and people like me that demand to be respected are seen as assholes. Meanwhile the company that’s charging them $1600/month for childcare that’s spitting in their face to earn extra on the side with their literal infants harvested data gets a pass because “that’s what companies do I guess”.
They definitely just made an account on the app. In 10-20 years their child will probably have higher health insurance premiums because predictive modeling will have data starting from day 1 and it shows a higher risk of colorectal cancers or whatever.
I cannot stress how badly I hope for a drastic change in the next 5-10 years. This is unsustainable. The villains are winning.
I appreciate your rant and think your username is very apt.
meanwhile I have mates telling me that googles SSO is the best thing since sliced bread.
ugh and then self hosting people being like “just use tailscale if you want to expose your stuff to the web”. You know, the “cloud based” solution that requires you to use apple/google/microsoft for authentication. What a great idea for someone that is looking to get away from all this dumb bullshit
Yeah, I don’t like the reliance of tailscale on servers and peering points out of my view.
Manual wireguard for me.
depends what the bad thing is in your opinion, i guess.
If you mean “losing any semblance of control over the things we need survive (digitally)” then I’d say its the same a prepping.
You can quite comfortably exist in the digital space and access everything you need via others if you want.
Just like you can exist in the real world, using fuel, food, power and other goods and services, supplied by others.
Both scenarios work well right up until they don’t.
The bad thing I mentioned is the loss of our individual control on our lives, things that most countries have enshrined in their constitutions: self-determination, the right to relatively good health, the right to control our lives. These things have eroded away in a terrible and malignant way.
I can, you can, and several others here can… But it is hard fucking work, and it’s a conscious choice we make against the current. Most ppl don’t care.
When you don’t participate in normal activities like Instagram, LinkedIn, etc, you can see the eyerolls.
It galls me very bitterly that I, who once championed Google and other online services, who lived online and used internet services and was at the forefront of technology use, am now forced to actually retreat from these parts of what is now called daily life just so I can live with myself.
The bad thing has happened.
We should not be the ones made to feel out of place for assuming that our data should be ours. We should be more outraged that companies can create apps to control our bed temps and just shut the service down without notice, or go bankrupt and sell the data to someone we don’t know or consent to, or create a new subscription model to heat our fucking car seats.
If there is some ambiguity to you about whether the bad thing has happened, start asking yourself why Signal, the “beacon of privacy” had some services fail during the aws outage.
It’s more like installing filters because sometimes they put malaria in the gasoline IMO.
Preppers believe some conspiracy doomsday shit, which is why nobody wants to be labeled a “prepper” I guess.
well what’s the name for people who don’t think there is a doomsday coming but feel like its not a bad idea to keep a tanks worth of petrol some canned food and a few blocks of water in the garage? I don’t think the internet is going to stop anytime soon either but if it did I’d be able to access Wikipedia, watch a few movies and my security cameras and smart home would still work.
Citizens?
Canada public safety recommends 72 hours of self sufficiency.
My in-laws live remote/rural, so they’re closer to 5 days.
Being ready for the apocalypse is a little strange. Being ready for a snowstorm/flood/bridge collapse is normal.
I’m sad that Opera Unite failed. It was the closest thing to self-hosting for regular non-technical people.