this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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The Cloud Is a Prison. Can the Local-First Software Movement Set Us Free? (www.wired.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Woohoo, I'm no longer a paranoid delusional for not wanting to store all my documents and photos in Google's Cloud. I'm a trendsetter!

Joking aside, having local data control while also having the ability to share and collaborate online would be nice. Most businesses won't have a need for it. But, for individuals, not being locked into to a particular provider is a good thing. Of course, it will come at the cost of convenience, it always does. And that's a cost many people won't be willing to pay.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Quite the opposite @[email protected] . I went to self-hosting everything precisely because I wanted to de-Google and de-cloud. Big Cloud proves over and over again that it lacks the responsibility, accountability, and motivation to take care of my identity. They only care about how they can make me their product.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Businesses who have a clue and a budget actually also have a need for local data control IMHO. Look at the hacking case with M365. And there's decent local collaboration software too - wikis, things like syncthing, some of the newer 0 trust stuff.

Let's face it, the thing the cloud is good for is serving up completely public websites.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I still have Adobe blacklisted for demanding cloud with monthly subscriptions.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Fuck Adobe with a 20ft light pole! We pay beaucoup dollars for their so-called enterprise support and to say that they suck is to understate things. It took them literally 4 business days to admit that one of our user's "licensing problem" was a problem on their end. They fixed it and had the nerve to send me a survey. I ripped them a new one on the survey but they likely don't care.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I guarantee that survey only served to be used against the CSR and has no baring on internal policy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I made it clear in the survey to praise the Adobe Engineer that worked with me today to finally resolve the issue. She was actually the picture of competence and backend knowledge. When my end user hung up, I actually asked her if she lived near me in my state because I was going to recommend her for an engineering position with my agency. I was truly that impressed. The rest of Adobe can get fucked with sandpaper for all I care.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s fair! I just don’t think feedback beyond CSR rating is read, lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

You're probably right. But I wanted it documented in case she got blamed she can say, "Read the comments."

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I haven't used an Adobe product in over a decade, so they can just go pound sand. FOSS has good enough support for what I need, and I'd much rather deal with a mailing list or issue tracker than Adobe any day of the week.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Hell yeah!

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Yeah, sure, bringing things back on prem where 90% of organizations do not have comparable resources in-house to manage and secure them, as opposed to leveraging a cloud provider and properly maintaining the shared responsibility model is going to "set us free".

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

You might think this, and I bought into it. Then I saw the recent Azure and M365 issues and responses to cloud security and nation state hacking of gov cloud stuff with consumer outlook accounts. I realized the cloud providers have all the incentive to sell that they hire better people because of economies of scale and do more things than you might locally, but in reality to outsource everything to the cheapest bidder in a different low cost of living country.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It sure seems like computers invented security problems just to ensnare us.

At least if you listen to people bitching about ever increasing security improvements on Apple devices.

What a weird situation overall.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I'd say it's more that computers only enabled the opportunity for humans to invent the security problems that other humans now have to counter with better computer and human solutions.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

There is no cloud, it's just someone else's computer.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Local-first all the way!

Cloud software is like being married, but your wife lives with another guy a few cities over. Someone else is benefitting at your expense.

So many great software products go downhill once the desktop versions are put on the back burner for cloud-based versions: , Evernote, Picasa (Google Photos), so many accounting/finance software, etc.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Cloud software is a prison or, more accurately, Hotel California. Cloud infrastructure, however, doesn't need to be the same.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

I would love for local-first to become the norm again, at least for some stuff like document collaboration.

P2P had its day, but perhaps it can rise again!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Really boring article. It takes like 5 pages to get to what it's tryna say: use CRDT, which is a real time collaborative editing algo, and CRDT is awesome. Problem is internet topologies and all the weird stuff that goes on

Take webrtc, which is exactly meant for p2p data streaming between arbitrary peers. Well, the dirty secret is that for it to work well, you usually need a TURN server, which is a centralized data relay. Unless you're connecting over local network, the turn server serves to literally send all the webrtc data to the peers

When you think about this some more, many many apps would be worse p2p. Think about anything with a CDN delivering video or files. Obviously you want those videos pre-replicated worldwide so that they can be served asap. Ok so p2p is only for collaboration, fine

Next problem, there's a good reason we all chose cloud. Even huge corps realized it would save them a ton of money to switch from their expensive private datacenters and staff. They were already paying money to some bomb shelter style server host, now they are just doing it virtually. And your engineers no longer have to drive out to wipe drives or replug wires, it's all perfectly managed

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Next problem, there’s a good reason we all chose cloud. Even huge corps realized it would save them a ton of money to switch from their expensive private datacenters and staff. They were already paying money to some bomb shelter style server host, now they are just doing it virtually. And your engineers no longer have to drive out to wipe drives or replug wires, it’s all perfectly managed

This part is just not true. Many companies are moving things back in house because of the cloud costs, along with how poorly the cloud actually turns out to be managed (at least the Microsoft one that most companies used for e-mail and collaboration). And the cloud never got easy enough to not need specialized employees, and in many cases, they're more expensive than "on prem" employees were because it was the hot new buzzword for a while.

I can go into lots of technical details, but it's worth pointing out that many huge corps are doing hybrid and using the cloud strictly for burst usage because the constant state costs are way way way cheaper if you own the servers. Which kind of makes sense - if you need a car for 2 days a year, you rent, but if you use it for hours a day, you buy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

As a sys engineer looking forward to my cloud engineer pay increase I can confirm.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Would Git be considered local-first software? Could you call it's data structures CRDTs?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I fucking hate wired's dramatic clickbait headlines so much lol. I'll believe it when I see it, because corporations love "the cloud". It's way cheaper than on prem, usually less downtime, and you can blame someone else when your system goes down.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ok but local first p2p software doesn't rely on centralized servers. So it's not a huge deal if you don't have always on servers. Hell you can probably avoid servers all together.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean you'd still need servers right, local first p2p means your data is stored locally and elsewhere, which would also be a privacy nightmare for corporations.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Selective peering is a solution here some. Encryption by default and other "ZeroTrust" centered security modeling can make it more possible.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That banner just makes go "1 2 3 4 5, 6 7 8 9 10... 11 12!" in my head :p

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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