alt Hacker NewsThe article's dystopia section is dramatic but the practical point is real. I've been self-hosting more and more over the past year specifically because I got uncomfortable with how much of my stack depended on someone else's servers.
Running a VPS with Tailscale for private access, SQLite instead of managed databases, flat files synced with git instead of cloud storage. None of this requires expensive hardware, it just requires caring enough to set it up
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Depending on someone else's servers isn't that different from depending on someone else's software, which unfortunately we all must do. Unfathomable reams of it, with a growth curve that recently went vertical. I guess the crucial difference is that someone else's servers can be taken away in a flash, while someone else's (FOSSl software can't.
You are missing one important part: maintenance. While on a managed service, dozens of hours of maintenance are done by someone, when you are self-hosting, you'll be doing 3 times that, because you can't know all the details of making so many tools work, because each tool will have to be upgraded at some point and the upgrade will fail, because you have to test you backups, and many many more things to do in the long run.
So yeah, it's fun. But don't under-estimate that time, it could easily be your time spent with friend or family.
> with Tailscale for private access
FWIW might want to check https://github.com/wg-easy/wg-easy to remove yet another managed elsewhere piece of your setup.