'The Future is Not Self-Hosted' (drewlyton.com) 152
A software developer who built his own home server in response to Amazon's removal of Kindle book downloads now argues that self-hosting "is NOT the future we should be fighting for." Drew Lyton constructed a home server running open-source alternatives to Google Drive, Google Photos, Audible, Kindle, and Netflix after Amazon announced that "Kindle users would no longer be able to download and back up their book libraries to their computers."
The change prompted Amazon to update Kindle store language to say "users are purchasing licenses -- not books." Lyton's setup involved a Lenovo P520 with 128GB RAM, multiple hard drives, and Docker containers running applications like Immich for photo storage and Jellyfin for media streaming. The technical complexity required "138 words to describe but took me the better part of two weeks to actually do."
The implementation was successful but Lyton concluded that self-hosting "assumes isolated, independent systems are virtuous. But in reality, this simply makes them hugely inconvenient." He proposes "publicly funded, accessible, at cost cloud-services" as an alternative, suggesting libraries could provide "100GB of encrypted file storage, photo-sharing and document collaboration tools, and media streaming services -- all for free."
The change prompted Amazon to update Kindle store language to say "users are purchasing licenses -- not books." Lyton's setup involved a Lenovo P520 with 128GB RAM, multiple hard drives, and Docker containers running applications like Immich for photo storage and Jellyfin for media streaming. The technical complexity required "138 words to describe but took me the better part of two weeks to actually do."
The implementation was successful but Lyton concluded that self-hosting "assumes isolated, independent systems are virtuous. But in reality, this simply makes them hugely inconvenient." He proposes "publicly funded, accessible, at cost cloud-services" as an alternative, suggesting libraries could provide "100GB of encrypted file storage, photo-sharing and document collaboration tools, and media streaming services -- all for free."
Power failure (Score:5, Insightful)
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Is there a big need to use your "local library" when the power goes out? You can't go a few hours without being connected to that shit?
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When the power goes out, I can start a gas generator and use my local library. Not so much if it is in the cloud.
When the power goes out, and my mom's gas plant kicks in, the internet is there, waiting for her, so that she can resume wherever she left off with her cloud thing.
At 82 YO, and hailing from a small remote villeage on lebbannon, it was hard enough to teach her to use "normie" stuff. I'd shudder at the tought of teaching her to handle "applications like Immich for photo storage and Jellyfin for media streaming". Not installing and administering them, mind you. Just how to use them.
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What cloud provider doesn't have a back generator? I certainly don't know of any. AWS and Azure certainly have generator and UPS backups, plus geo-redundant replication so that operations can continue uninterrupted even if an entire datacenter is demolished by a tornado or something. You certainly can't get that kind of up-time with your personal server, even with a gas generator.
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Re:Power failure (Score:4, Insightful)
A few times a year, living rural. Then there are natural disasters.
You may be confusing your suburban or urban experience for everybody's experience.
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Natural disaster!!! Look out!!!! Where is my god damn Kindle library?! Fuck! Wesa allsa gonna die (without Kindle)!!!!!!!!
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No we're not going to die, but its nice to have things to do in such situations. When I was a kid we had a hurricane come through that knocked out our power for over a month.
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There is plenty to do, especially during a natural disaster.
Hell, people could get a lot of benefit by taking a month off from the internet.
But that said, one could easily and cheaply handle the "oh my god, I have to have shit to read when the power is out" problem, easily and cheaply, by keeping a few unread books around, specifically for that purpose. Hell, I probably have ten unread books on my shelf simply because I've not gotten around to reading them yet.
The only problem a one month power outage woul
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And what happens when it is just too dark to read? With a full powerbank and/or your phone you may get somewhere. But chances are much higher that your phone and/or powerbank are nearly empty when a power failure occurs.
I know, I have experienced that multiple times already in all the time I lived in South-America. And not in rural South-America, but in capitals. One time I was spending a weekend on a ranchero in the middle of nowhere. And at night the power was turned off (by the owner of the ranch). The a
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And what happens when it is just too dark to read?
Well, you know, that is where basic preparedness comes in handy.
Have a generator (or better: two)
Have a portable power station.
Have flashlights.
Have batteries.
Have some candles.
Have some stabilized gasoline.
Have some dedicated emergency food.
Have a cold weather gear bag (if appropriate).
Have a "go bag".
Have some cash.
Have some maps.
Have some dedicated credit cards.
Have some duplicate identification.
Etc.
Honestly, it really isn't very hard to be prepared for basic things like a power outage.
The U.S. federal g
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So your solution that doesn't involve a generator starts with ... two generators.
What are you talking about? I don't make any claims about a solution that doesn't involve generators. The post I responded to didn't say anything about not using generators either (unless I missed it). The whole thing is about being prepared for a utility power failure.
And as my own anecdote - only 2 power failures in my urban location in ten years, but they were 4 and 36 hours. Even heavily populated areas in first world nations sometimes have long power outages, and yes, having local media to keep children entertained while it's still 30C and muggy at night is a good thing
Ooooooookkkkkkkkkk.
Well, first, I didn't advocate against having local media.
Second, local media need not be electronic.
Three, there are plenty of non-media forms of entertainment for children.
Fourth, if it is 30C and muggy at night, my prio
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Being prepared is unquestionably superior than being unprepared.
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No we're not going to die, but its nice to have things to do in such situations.
This is a pretty damning reflection on people in 2025 if they think there's nothing to do without access to some online media library. Not a criticism of you by the way, this is starting to turn into a general trend. People are unable to switch off, unable to entertain themselves without technology, have no hobbies that aren't connected in some way to the internet or power. And it's not being helped by parents of the current generation throwing their kids into a pram and shoving an iPad in their face.
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Why do I never have mod points when I -REALLY- need them?
+1 Funny
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What's more, Kindle is the worst example as even the 4GB one would store thousands of books (and most Kindles nowadays are a few times that). For most people this is their whole library, so what's the FOMO, that you can't buy new books?
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That your Kindle dies and you lose the books on it because Amazon cancelled the licence.
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Re: Power failure (Score:2)
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That's just it. There's plenty else to do.
Even if you're a hermit, living a solitary life, there's other shit to do.
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In the Northeastern US, we get snow storms. Snow can build up on trees, etc and take them down. Some trees are near powerlines too.
In 20 years, I've lost count of the number of times power was out more than 2 days. There is usually a power outage once a year. I remember one that lasted a week and a coworker with an hour commute had no power for 3 weeks. One time, the neighbor's tree across the street fell on the power line. The power company had things back in 24hrs, but it may have been 36hrs.
However
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Either you are part of the unlucky few, or your grid and power companies seem to suck. I live just north of you (Quebec) and never experienced a 2 days power failure. Worst case in the last 40 years must be something like a couple hours.
Almost nobody uses UPS at home. Backup generator are pretty much non-existent for residential areas as well. And most people heat with electricity only (with some also using wood or propane).
I'm not saying major outages don't exist (we had one in 1998) but they are not somet
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Are you rural?
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He likes rural.
Do you have any to give?
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That's a lot of unpreparedness.
Here is a site for you:
https://canadianpreparedness.c... [canadianpreparedness.com]
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I also live in Quebec. Power outages lasting more than 24 hours are a yearly occurance where I live. And it used to be much more often. Twenty years ago, we had at least five 24+ hours outages in just one year.
And it's not a matter of power companies, since all of Quebec has the same electricity provider: Hydro-Quebec.
Like some other posters have mentionned, Urban dwellers seem to be unaware of the different reality of rural living.
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I also live in Quebec. Power outages lasting more than 24 hours are a yearly occurance where I live. And it used to be much more often. Twenty years ago, we had at least five 24+ hours outages in just one year.
And it's not a matter of power companies, since all of Quebec has the same electricity provider: Hydro-Quebec.
Like some other posters have mentionned, Urban dwellers seem to be unaware of the different reality of rural living.
I'm in MB and our hydro dams and HVDC are quite reliable at a grid scale. Even in the city though outages still happen due to aging equipment, lightning strikes, poles hit by cars, squirrels in the transformers, etc. Most outages are brief and I have quite a few UPSes for that. But if the power is out more than 5 minutes that probably means it will be out for hours. In those rare cases if I'm home for sure I will take to opportunity to fire up the generator, makes sure the battery is charged and it runs
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It's not free (Score:4, Insightful)
But it's not free, and it's not cheap. It's the government that has to pay for it via tax payer dollars, the power, the people, the hardware, the maintenance, etc. It could be free to the user, but the cost has to come out of some government budget somewhere and that's not a simple solution at all. So I like the idea from a policy perspective, but it may not be logistically feasible.
Seems from a practical implementation perspective it'd be more like a public utility, a regulated monopoly like power distribution or some such.
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Probably more of a "public option", if the government operates and then sells a service at an "at cost" price it provides competition and price stability in an increasingly verticalized industry.
Of course I would say in this case this is a matter of if we deem this type of thing a utility rather than a service and even then I would want to see if there is some sort of market failure happening or is it a fairly robust and competitive market already with lots of choices. I think if that's the case then you j
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The whole point here is that as an alternative to BOTH AWS/Azure type monster datacenters *and* the old server-in-the-cupboard DIY approach (that really does need those gigabit pipes to work well in 2025) , something like local datacenters run by the local city or state govt or whatever, run at cost price to provide alternatives to the giant world eating super-clouds.
If we all had gigabit pipes, then the host at home thing could be entirely plausible, would just be a case of a bit of software engineering to
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Also what he's missing is that in practice this would just mean that the local library would contract this out to... google, aws (amazon), or azure / office365 anyway.
(I agree w/ the TFA that self hosting and staying on top of security threats, software updates etc is just a pain. but i don't think most towns really have the resources to run something like this reliably either. )
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Doing things collectively is usually cheaper than doing them individually, and there's also the issue of support and ease of use. Most people probably wouldn't even try to set up a home server due to the complexity. That's one reason why those off-the-shelf NAS boxes with app stores are popular, despite being expensive.
100GB isn't much though, if you assume people are going to want to replace physical Bluray collections with digital ones, or big audio collections. I've got getting on for 300GB of music ripp
Maybe I'm too old (Score:5, Insightful)
But why does anyone need or want so much data at home, and worse pay for all this?
There's only 24 hours in a day, of which I might have 10 to myself. How much can you read, watch, or listen to in a day?
This is digital hoarding, with the same underlying mentall illness.
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How much data are you talking about? He said he uses multiple 8TB drives with parity so either has 16TB or 24TB of data. That's not a lot of space for some use cases. If you're into any kind of video recording or processing that will quickly fill up. The summary is clear his server isn't just for books.
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Well, if each book has its own docker container...
Re:Maybe I'm too old (Score:5, Insightful)
I do photography as a side thing. I've got about 10TB worth of content between RAW and PSD/PSB files. That's just one part of things. Other family members do the same, or record videos. We also sync our phones automatically to our self-hosted solutions through apps like Nextcloud. We're also going back historically and scanning in film/slides dating as far back as a century ago. Its a family archive, something better than a traditional print photo album in that we have searchability, portability, and sharability. The archive isn't just for one person, its for a whole group of people to enjoy whenever they want.
Re: Maybe I'm too old (Score:2)
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Oh yes, those digital hoarders are so insane. Like people who collect commemorative plates or cars. Insane!
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Re: Maybe I'm too old (Score:2)
They also can get out of hand. They are also not filled with so many books that you can outlive the Sun and still not read all of them.
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Partly because amazon/netflix/whoever can decide arbitrarily, or at the behest of (((rights holders))) to remove things willy nilly. But mainly because it's kind of cool. For a site that used to pride itself on nerdy endeavors, rather than being as obnoxiously pride adjacent as possible (like creating your own alternative to the 'cloud'), you guys sure miss the god damn point.
But by anecdote, we built our house in a pretty rural spot, the only internet access was either viasat or 4g cellular, both of which
Aethetics (Score:2)
You can use that admission to great advantage.
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I'm surprised how many times I hear this argument to justify the use of DRM to take everything away.
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If you want to do a lossless rip of a Bluray disc, that is anywhere from 25GB to 125GB. If you compress it down you can get maybe 3GB for a 1080p movie and 10-15GB for a 4k one.
I've got about 5TB of photos and videos I personally shot (99% on a phone), and maybe another terabyte of edited versions. I suppose arguably I could go through and delete the ones I don't need to keep, remove the RAWs and re-compress the video after editing. But doing so would take so much time that it's cheaper to buy more storage,
Ok, sure, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe self-hosted is not everyone's future... but it's my future---and present, for that matter.
A cloud service as a regulated and public utility is a good idea. But I'm still gonna hang on to my self-hosted setup (and maybe use the cloud service as a backup.)
Free as in shit (Score:2)
”138 words to describe but took me the better part of two weeks to actually do."
So it’s not “free as in beer”, or “free as in freedom”. It’s just “free as in shit”? If something costs thousands of pounds of labour time, it’s not free. It’s really expensive.
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If something costs thousands of pounds of labour time, it’s not free. It’s really expensive.
Only if its something you don't want to be doing. You're not billing yourself for your hobbies.
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He didn't have to go all enterprise with docker which eats ram and stupid library managers that transcode video for some unknown reason and thus need cpu.
My videos are exported through samba and i play them with vlc on a chromecast plugged into the TV. VLC can decode everything so there's no need for transcoding on the server end, or containers and crap.
For books there's Calibre for a Kindle, or just a directory exported via http for getting them on a tablet.
You can have a home lab, but you don't need it. I
I wrote many of my own apps. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a software engineer and at some point I got tired of forced updates, continuous changes that no one asks for and just got fed up with the prevailent enshitification in general.
So I started writing my own apps.
Now I've got 9 of my own apps for everyday stuff that are written to my spec, with the features I want, no recurring payments (other than super-low AWS bills; under 15 USD a month for everything). Deployed both as web app and an android app. Things like todo lists, shopping lists, financial planner connected with my bank account, a meal planner with meal templates, generation of meals and automatic shopping lists, etc. Fully fledged apps with everything I need and without everything I don't.
Plus, it's been a great self-development exercise, keeping my skills fresh.
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"users are purchasing licenses -- not books" (Score:5, Interesting)
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Arrrr! Is that what you do, me matey?
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Following up on your subject line... If the purchase agreement didn't previously specifically say a license was being purchased, instead of an electronic copy of the book, then I fail to see how the updated terms could/should apply retroactively to previous purchases. The prohibition / disablement of saving copies should only apply to purchases made *after* the term were updated. I wonder how a law suit would pan out. Maybe the verbiage was buried somewhere else, though wouldn't make it a deceptive pra
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I fail to see how the updated terms could/should apply retroactively to previous purchases
Probably some little clause in the original license which you failed to notice.
"I Am Altering the Deal, Pray I Don't Alter It Any Further."
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Yep, why not buy the book, remove the binding, scan the pages, and even throw away the paper. This whole license thing is going too far.
Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
While that is true, it is a solvable problem, by making better software. He also added needless complexity to his project, for example, putting everything in Docker containers. There is also some question as to whether he needed 8 TB of hard drive space, but also I feel jealous of that, so if he wants it, go for it.
His solution is to make a public cloud, available from the library, with all the features and data available by API. This is not something the US government will be able to do, for various reasons. One party will try to censor it, and the other will try to destroy it (or vice versa, depending who implements it first).
In short, he came up with a solution that was not great, and proposed a solution that is not feasible.
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I'm not sure if I could have enough storage to store a local copy of every game, movie, and TV show that I'll need to keep myself entertained for a lifetime. Saving a copy of every YouTube video I ever watched would probably go into dozens of TB on it's own.
It would be pretty cool if there was a free peer to peer storage network to store this kind of stuff. The copyright holders would never go for that sort of thing, though.
Even it it was all copyright free material, you know that some jerk would eventually
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He chose a really cumbersome way to go about it. If you want to make your own cloud, it makes sense to use cloud software like NextCloud or OwnCloud.
Also, for like $10/mo. he could get a VPS and slap NextCloud on there.
Another easy solution would be TrueNAS. He would have a web interface for installing those Docker containers and whatnot and there would be very little manual configuration.
He talks about how he spent two weeks hacking together a bunch of setup scripts when that was completely unnecessary. It
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He chose a really cumbersome way to go about it. If you want to make your own cloud, it makes sense to use cloud software like NextCloud or OwnCloud. Also, for like $10/mo. he could get a VPS and slap NextCloud on there. Another easy solution would be TrueNAS.
Solid recs.
Why do we expect everything to be free? (Score:2)
Internet connections, servers, maintenance, software, etc all cost money. Why should any of this stuff be âoefreeâ? Sure you donâ(TM)t have to host your own server in your basement, hut you can use a hosting account online, Google drive, onedrive, box,Dropbox etc.
Inconvenient compared to what? (Score:4, Informative)
I have to update Immich once in a while, but I don't have to worry about Google sifting through my photos. I have to have an extra drive dock for Plex content, but I don't have to worry about managing a dozen different video service subscriptions.
I don't think my self-hosted services are "virtuous," but I do think they represent some of the best options available, and I have the skill to take advantage of what thy offer.
And why in the world would I trust a local library to securely store my content from all the hackers and identity thieves in the world?
Just buy a Synology box (Score:4, Informative)
I self-host photos, media, backups, and such. It's well-engineered and pretty low power. Then I have mostly decent apps on my phone for everything. Well, the audio streaming sucks, but the rest is good. I've been on vacation for a month and have full access to my files.
Don't over think it. (Score:4, Informative)
Over the years I have purchased a Synology DS213j with (2)2TB drives, a DS216j with (2)4TB drives, and a DS218j with (2)8TB drives. The services built into these inexpensive NAS' are all you need. The only issue I ever had was one of my 4TB drives died. But no worries, RAID to the rescue. I replaced the drive and was back up after RAID rebuilt the new drive. I always purchase a third drive as a spare if and when needed. As time progressed and I needed more space I simply purchased another NAS and moved the files to the larger NAS. I keep the older NAS' online for moving large files around my network or temp space when working on computers. I've been doing this for about 15 years now with no issues. (Yes, I realize that Synology became ass-bags recently so I'll need to choose wisely when purchasing my next NAS.)
Solving the wrong problem... (Score:3)
They didn't do that because AWS blob downloads suddenly got way more expensive; they did that because they have effectively total control over what permission changes happen in response to giving them money; and considerable though imperfect control over the behavior of client applications(especially on smartphones; where default-deny cryptographic enforcement and attestation are significantly more common). Same thing with the ever-shifting 'exclusives' and ad loads of the various streaming services: those don't suck because Netflix is bad at CDN; they suck because the rightsholders can turn, and wish to, turn the screws with a lot more granularity than they could back when the limited ability of DVDs to phone home more or less forced them to suck it up and resent first sale quietly.
Especially if you stay away from some of the vendor-specific abstractions and upsells private sector 'cloud' pricing is pretty aggressive and a number of very useful types of service are even reasonably portable between them. The issue is that, at the 'consumer' level, actually being a cloud service customer; rather than being a subscriber or buyer of licensed-not-sold-sucker digital things, is at least as atypical as self-hosting; and it's typically the service rather than the infrastructure layer where the screwjob comes in.
This isn't to say that 'the cloud' is always the better option; hyperscaler margins comes from somewhere and that somewhere is not always operational efficiencies; but the user experience difference between running a chunky NAS and paying for some S3 buckets or whatever is vastly smaller than the difference between either of those options and a service where you need to plead with Amazon for them to bless your client with a text file or satisfy Widevine L1 to get high resolution video streams.
Anyone know why the cost of bandwidth skyrocketed? (Score:2)
Like I said my guess is Monopoly and or collusion but does anyone know the specifics?
Gimme Serfdom? (Score:5, Insightful)
It will always be the goal of oligarchs to move us from an ownership society toward serfdom--that's where the real profit is. If you look at many of the technological developments of the past decade, that's where we're headed:
The oligarchs sell you convenience with a "devil's bargain": Why buy books, music, movies, and other cultural artifacts when you can rent them, leaving a data trail of your every cultural experience for marketing manipulators to analyze? Why keep your own anonymous money in the form of cash when you can pay with bits in your phone, making every purchase, no matter how trivial, analyzable by marketeers, auditable by law enforcement, and available to political actors seeking to hamper their enemies? Why store your memories and secrets in your own possession when "the cloud" will let you access it from anywhere, all the while never promising that nobody else can access it from anywhere? Why own property with your own rights to it when the job market keeps you moving from place to place, never really developing a community and connections close enough to stand with you, and you with them, when your collective will is challenged?
You should own your data. You should own your story—you should should have exclusive power over who gets to keep it, who gets to tell it, and who you choose to tell it to.
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Under the law of most countries, it's true that we don't have complete control of data collected about us. (In a couple of countries though, a person who didn't want their photo taken has the right to confiscate your camera.)
However, I would advocate any legislation that grants me more control over my data, and more power over those who would gather data on me and use it to my disadvantage. (And I wrote an essay about this which was posted to Slashdot at least 25 years ago but is now long lost.)
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If your data indicate that I'm an asshole, who "owns" those data and the rights to them?
Does it depend on what the data are?
What if the data in question is simply your file on me that says:
Name: registrations_suck
Asshole Status: positive
What if you make the data available on a website called "assholeornot.com" where anyone with a subscription can log in, enter a name, and get a response as to whether the person in question is an asshole or not?
Now, what if there are a few more fields, like a birth date, and
Gave it up years ago (Score:2)
I gave up running my own servers probably 15 years ago.
I would argue that is the future of The Past (Score:2)
The Past being "being able to curate a collection of stuff that we increasingly get told that we no longer buy and/or own". For the people that this matters , of course.
It starts out small, and often not very noticeable, but is a like a digital comparable to half life of radioactive decay for data. Over the span of many years, we lose track/copies of things in a seemingly random manner. Ebooks, digital video/music purchases, video/music on physical media, our personal email data, photo collections saved to
Elbow grease, knowledge, time and willingness (Score:3)
Are the currency of free as in beer and free as in freedom software...
Some people have the knowledge and time, but not the willingness. My case, I do OpenStack in the day, I do nt want to do it in the afternoon and weekneds too. Like Linus, I'd rather dive (pun intended).
Other people have the knowledge and willingnes, but lack the time.
Other people have time and willingness, but lack the knowledge*.
Other people have the willingness, but lack BOTH the knowledge and the time.
For those people, normal cloud services, and/or a Synology, QNAP (and others) that provide turn-key paid private clouds are a god send.
There is room for everything and everyone.
* There are people who are very knowledgeable and smart, but in their own domain, but lack specific computer knowledge for F/OSS. An MD, lawyer or CPA are great examples of what I mean.
So, let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
...instead of having enthusiasts work on their hobby if it matters to them, Drew proposes that libraries - notorious for funding constraints and limited staffing - offer those same self-hosted services? ...And, I assume library staff is going to provide tech support for this, right? And he wants backups, right? And 100GB/patron means that it'd take less than 10% of patrons to exhaust the amount of storage most libraries would budget for...AND, are libraries supposed to keep data if users move out of the district? Also, my last discussion with my library's IT folks indicated that they got rid of their local servers and it's all on AWS and/or M365 now anyway...
And let's even assume ALL OF THAT was solved...he didn't like the function set...what's the library going to offer that will solve that problem? If it's software who's functionality he didn't like, that has nothing to do with self-hosting. If the library software solves the problem...what would be the problem self-hosting it since he's got the gear anyway?
Ultimately, it's super unclear what the point is here...except that, apparently, he wants to externalize hosting onto taxpayers instead of having to make the purchases. To his point, self-hosting is a hobby, and it's not for everyone...but it's super unclear how he's suggesting "a future we should be fighting for". People that don't care about privacy or transient availability of data are served by Google and Microsoft and Amazon. The people that *do* care about those things aren't going to trust their local libraries much more than they'll trust the big tech. So...why is this a better future? It's still trusting one's own data to someone else's computer...
In other words... (Score:2)
... they got to him!
Can't argue with inconvenience (Score:3)
I'm not hearing anything about any Orwellian scenarios that are looking likely , such as , big tech curating what you see to arbitrary revocation of privileges.
Hard pass . Guaranteed to be science fiction bad .
Doesn't know what he's talking about (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't need a 128GB RAM PC to self host 100GBs (Score:4, Insightful)
You can do that on the very first Raspberry Pi, or literally on any smartphone that accepts some storage. Or (the natural place mosly anyone could have and it's on 24/7) on some openWRT capable router.
Difficult so Socialism (Score:2)
"Work too hard, I want somebody else to do it for me for free."
I don't begrudge anybody who takes two weeks to learn how to admin a linux system with Docker, but if you fail, keep working, don't insist everybody's municipal government take over and tax your neighbors to give you "free" luxury services.
And, yes, never will everybody have the skills to self-host. Some people could never learn to program their VCR and their oven clock always blinks. They can't even handle a Synology.
"I failed, this is doomed
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Frankly it would be best if the government stays out and doesn't do the things it does (not all in one country, collected from around the world), namely charging/for:
- TV and Radio tax even if you don't have a radio or TV, even if you don't have ANYTHING that can stream, no phone, PC, internet connection, anything. Germany, I'm looking at you, although UK is also funny with their TV license that's based on the TV, and it's charged at a reduced rate for blind people (but they still pay for TV) and they pay m
sorry but what (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't mean to be completely dismissive of his efforts but this really sounds like he took a very naive approach to replicate an aesthetic experience instead of looking at the functions he actually needed, then complained it was a lot of work.
There are definitely better ways to do this.
Our Dataholders Are Unworthy of Our Trust (Score:2)
Sigh. (Score:2)
Any "developer" that takes two weeks to deploy what is basically Nextcloud... yeah, I don't trust their opinion at all.
Re: (Score:2)
We need this (Score:2)
"Libraries could provide "100GB of encrypted file storage, photo-sharing and document collaboration tools, and media streaming services -- all for free."
Libraries are one of the few remaining places where the weight of one's wallet doesn't determine what access one has to the world of knowledge. It would be good to see them expand into this area.
A more realistic example... (Score:2)
Non technical people are not going to buy and operate a high end server with 128GB ram, and then manually deploy hundreds of virtual machines on it...
But buying an off the shelf NAS appliance, many people can and do exactly that.
Many of these NAS devices will let you install additional packages as simple as choosing them from a list, you get things like owncloud, torrent clients, media servers etc as well as the built in capabilities of the NAS.
Adding an SSL certificate is usually also a built in capability
Re: (Score:3)
You need a license to read a book but not purchase a gun.
Nice try.
You don't need a license to buy (or read, or possess) a book any more than you need a license to buy a gun.
However, in some areas (the usual suspects*) in the U.S, you DO need a license to buy a gun, and in NO areas do you need a license to buy a book.
* California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, and New York.