@silverpill@mitra.social Ah, I see what you mean. In my case I'm trying to find a general solution, not just for fediverse software but for everything TCP/TLS. I'm proud of how greenhouse manages to provide that while remaining "mostly trustless", but the usage metrics speak for themselves. No one seems to want to use it. And I don't blame them; besides some dogfooding that I forced myself to do on the greenhouse-alpha.server.garden domain, I don't use it myself. I already have port forwarding that works, why change?
I'm definitely interested in things like IPFS <--> HTTP gateways but I think they have the most value when they're hosted by the same community that uses them, so the incentives are aligned. (as opposed to, for example, the CloudFlare one 🤮 )
Having the homebrew servers dialable on the public internet is a pre-req for that.
@silverpill@mitra.social Yes, but as I explained in the P2P section of the article, until mainstream web browsers support that kind of stuff, we're stuck with either
1. holding the admin's hand through the process of configuring port forwarding on the router (like how YunoHost does)
2. Using a VPN or tunnel to traverse the NAT (like how my other project greenhouse.server.garden does)
That's just my opinion tho. Personally I believe if the browser can't dial it, its not really "online".
I want to make it easier to get to a point where you can share a URL & anyone can surf to it, no special client required 🏄
but who will help me carry the wheat to run the server??
I just finished writing a HUGE new blog post, this one elaborates on what I wanna work on next instead of greenhouse
https://sequentialread.com/federation-vs-clustering-self-hosting/
Yeah I feel similar about YunoHost. My two biggest wishes for a system like YunoHost are
1. Built to support replication/failover
2. Built to support multiple users
By "support multiple users" I mean similar to how Mastodon/Matrix servers do the "1 admin per ~100 users" model.
So for example I can share my server with my friend, create an account for them, and then they can get their feet wet and try out hosting something themselves without expending too much effort.
But at the same time, since it supports replication & failover, there's a reasonable path to those "experiments" becoming well loved and frequented destinations with reliability / longevity. When one admin falls (loses interest) another can rise to take their place without much fuss.
So I think that's what I'll work on next :)
> surveillance capitalism is structural, not individual
> Harassing people [...] does Not make anyone safer or more secure.
💯 More people need to hear this.
I would like to also offer a bit of my own rant and optimistic take on how the structural/systemic issues at hand here can be addressed.
IMO a lot of the "structure" at work here comes from economic forces that poured endless investment cash into research & effort on how to make client software and webapps usable by everyone.
Meanwhile the usability of the server applications / web infrastructure stuff is still stuck in the 80/90s for the most part.
I think tech folks with the resources and time can (and should!!) strike at the root of the problem. To me that mostly means trying to improve the usability of server software and make it more accessible to more people.
I don't mean everyone should run a server.
But as servers become more and more like web browsers (they "just work" on the first try and don't break when they update themselves automatically) it will become more and more likely that everyone will know someone, or a friend of a friend in their community who _does_ run a server.
I liked the "TL;DR" from homebrewserver.club:
> Take the ‘home’ in homebrew literally and the ‘self’ in self-hosting figuratively
> That means we try to host from our homes rather than from data centres - a.k.a. ‘the cloud’ - and we try to host for and with our communities rather than just for ourselves.
I think the fediverse software and similar networks have sorta succeeded in that regard despite continued rampant usability problems on the server/admin side. Its encouraging to me that something like mastodon which is far from perfect can still gain traction and continues to attract new users and inspire new projects.
Basically I want to be a home server evangelist but if the thing I would be evangelizing still costs money, takes time to set up, and still fails 99% of the time, what's the point?
Just need to get the software / systems to a point where they don't annoy ppl much, they can be easily shared with friends, and they fulfill a need. For example they provide a sense of data custody and belonging within a local community, something folks'll never get from Google, Facebook or AWS.
Yes, its a tall order, its insanely hard / no one knows if this is even possible. But I feel like I would be doing myself and everyone else a disservice if I didn't try.
It's been many months since I've really seriously worked on any of my projects, in the mean time I had some fairly major life upheavals (getting covid, quitting drinking, starting therapy)
But lately I've finally been slowly getting back into it & reorganizing my thoughts. I think I do want to keep working on creating my own homebrew server oriented software project, but I think I'm going to start over at this point. Greenhouse was a bit of a failure and I think I need to completely redesign.
https://sequentialread.com/greenhouse-retrospective-and-future/
When It Does Not Listen for Thee, Ask for Whom the Server Listens
https://sequentialread.com/understanding-listening-addresses/
Minneapolis folks, I am planning on hosting a free workshop on how to to make a website from scratch. (HTML and CSS)
The workshop is meant to be for folks who have never done it before, but experts are welcome too!
Check out more details and mark times you would be available @ https://framadate.org/ABPiTpWWEzqNWmo6
Also, plz boost if you are in the area. Thanks 🧡
Today, the Bonfire team is excited to announce our beta release 🔥🎉
We’re aware that Bonfire still needs a lot of work - like ensuring it federates as expected and improving configurability, accessibility and user experience - but that’s the point: we decided to launch at this stage with the intention of building the 1.0 release as a community.
🗞️ Blog post: https://bonfirenetworks.org/posts/meet_us_at_the_playground/
🌈 Signup on the playground instance:
https://playground.bonfire.cafe
2nd batch of energy drinks came out way better :)
ln's postgres optimization tip
put "EXPLAIN ANALYZE" in front of your query, paste output to https://explain.depesz.com/ and look for values in the exclusive column which look way too high. then check in the node column what it is doing and maybe add an appropriate index.
*poof* yer a postgres witch now :3
@starless i like the color on this one🌿
The bloat is just legacy.. Its alll legacy. its just like email. Well. err. Thank god its not as bad as email 😅
I feel like way too often ppl conflate
"the big heavy bloat of the web / can't make a new web browser"
with
"the corporate takeover of the web / panopticon platform centralization"
They are totally not the same thing!
In my opinion the last ghost of a chance of a decentralized internet depends heavily on some of the "worst offender" bloat features in web browsers, like ServiceWorker, the local caches and databases, and connectivity enablers like WebSocket / WebRTC
Reason being that if the majority of browsers support these, it could make self-hosting and community hosting web platforms and content way easier
I still think what I wrote there, my thesis, still holds up 10 yrs later:
> If your app doesn't have a URL, who's going to use it?
I just realized that I wrote this
TEN YEARS AGO
https://sequentialread.com/pragmatic-path-towards-non-technical-users-owning-their-own-data/
jeeezus im getting old
I am a web technologist who is interested in supporting and building enjoyable ways for individuals, organizations, and communities to set up and maintain their own server infrastructure, including the hardware part.
I am currently working full time as an SRE 😫, but I am also heavily involved with Cyberia Computer Club and Layer Zero