WEBVTT 1 00:00:10.080 --> 00:00:12.895 Friends, hello, and welcome Never Post, a 2 00:00:12.895 --> 00:00:15.055 podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host, Mike 3 00:00:15.055 --> 00:00:19.455 Rugnetta. This intro was written on Tuesday, 12/02/2025 at 4 00:00:19.455 --> 00:00:24.415 08:29AM eastern, and we have an enterprising show for you this 5 00:00:24.415 --> 00:00:29.350 week. Audrey talks with software engineer, blogger, and hopeful 6 00:00:29.510 --> 00:00:33.510 Internet owner Drew Leighton about his realization that he's 7 00:00:33.510 --> 00:00:37.945 a digital serf in a feudalistic power imbalance. They discuss 8 00:00:37.945 --> 00:00:42.025 his efforts to gain some autonomy by building his own 9 00:00:42.025 --> 00:00:46.025 cloud server and also pew pew lake. 10 00:00:46.105 --> 00:00:48.345 But right now, we're gonna take a quick break. You're gonna 11 00:00:48.345 --> 00:00:51.310 listen to some ads unless you're on the member feed. And when we 12 00:00:51.310 --> 00:00:53.550 return, we're gonna talk about a few of the things that have 13 00:00:53.550 --> 00:00:58.270 happened since the last time you heard from us. Yeah. I'm not big 14 00:00:58.270 --> 00:00:59.790 on social graces. 15 00:00:59.790 --> 00:01:04.915 I think I'll slip on down to the oasis. Oh, I've got five stories 16 00:01:04.915 --> 00:01:10.355 for you this week. The radios could get a big block of I p v 17 00:01:10.355 --> 00:01:14.995 six addresses. An IETF or Internet Engineering Task Force 18 00:01:14.995 --> 00:01:19.730 draft proposal calls for a block of IP addresses to be given to 19 00:01:19.730 --> 00:01:24.370 ham radio operators for experimentation following in the 20 00:01:24.370 --> 00:01:28.290 tradition set forth by their being granted the 44 slash eight 21 00:01:28.290 --> 00:01:34.205 block of IPv four addresses. Individual operators and amateur 22 00:01:34.205 --> 00:01:37.805 organizers, the proposal reads, currently depend on commercial 23 00:01:37.805 --> 00:01:42.365 Internet providers or regional Internet registries for IPv6 24 00:01:42.365 --> 00:01:45.830 connectivity, processes that are often misaligned with the 25 00:01:45.830 --> 00:01:49.990 amateur services non commercial and volunteer nature. 26 00:01:50.150 --> 00:01:54.070 Provider assigned prefixes are transient, non portable, and 27 00:01:54.070 --> 00:01:57.350 frequently filtered making them unsuitable for long term 28 00:01:57.350 --> 00:02:01.535 experimental networks. The news website, The Register, calls the 29 00:02:01.535 --> 00:02:05.535 request unusual, but says it may be worth considering, quote, 30 00:02:05.535 --> 00:02:08.815 because the amateur radio community has a long history of 31 00:02:08.815 --> 00:02:12.335 doing interesting things that later become useful in other 32 00:02:12.335 --> 00:02:24.250 contexts. Guaranteed human, says iHeartRadio. The name of its new 33 00:02:24.250 --> 00:02:27.450 pledge summarizes the audio platform's stance on AI 34 00:02:27.450 --> 00:02:31.145 generated music and personalities. Billboard reports 35 00:02:31.145 --> 00:02:33.785 that iHeart chief programming officer and president Tom 36 00:02:33.785 --> 00:02:37.625 Pullman said in a letter to staff that the company won't use 37 00:02:37.625 --> 00:02:42.105 AI generated personalities or play AI music that features 38 00:02:42.105 --> 00:02:45.270 synthetic vocalists pretending to be human. 39 00:02:45.350 --> 00:02:49.190 Pullman describes this as a promise and shares unattributed 40 00:02:49.190 --> 00:02:53.910 research claiming, quote, 70% of consumers say they use AI as a 41 00:02:53.910 --> 00:03:13.470 tool, yet 90% want their media to be from real humans. Solomon 42 00:03:13.470 --> 00:03:18.510 Ray doesn't exist. The top artist on the iTunes top 100 43 00:03:18.510 --> 00:03:21.790 Christian and gospel albums chart this week according to 44 00:03:21.790 --> 00:03:26.805 christianitytoday.com is made with AI. His appearance, lyrics, 45 00:03:26.805 --> 00:03:30.965 music, the whole package generated. Ray is associated 46 00:03:30.965 --> 00:03:36.405 with tracks titled soul to the world and jingle bell soul, and 47 00:03:36.405 --> 00:03:41.460 yet, quote, at minimum, AI does not have the holy spirit inside 48 00:03:41.460 --> 00:03:44.580 of it, Christian music singer songwriter Forrest Frank said on 49 00:03:44.580 --> 00:03:45.380 Instagram. 50 00:03:45.460 --> 00:03:49.140 So I think it's really weird to be opening up your spirit to 51 00:03:49.140 --> 00:03:58.425 something that has no spirit. Poems can fool AI into making 52 00:03:58.425 --> 00:04:02.505 you a bomb, reports Wired. Generally, chatbots have inbuilt 53 00:04:02.505 --> 00:04:06.025 guardrails to prevent them from discoursing on the worst or most 54 00:04:06.025 --> 00:04:09.730 dangerous subject matter, but researchers in Rome found that, 55 00:04:09.730 --> 00:04:13.650 quote, poetic framing achieved an average jailbreak success 56 00:04:13.650 --> 00:04:18.290 rate of sixty two percent for handcrafted poems, end quote. 57 00:04:18.450 --> 00:04:22.370 Wired requested copies of the poetry used to jailbreak the 58 00:04:22.370 --> 00:04:25.695 models, getting them to hold forth on building munitions and 59 00:04:25.695 --> 00:04:30.175 malware amongst other things. But the researchers refused, 60 00:04:30.255 --> 00:04:34.735 saying the poems are too dangerous to be released to the 61 00:04:34.735 --> 00:04:35.455 public. 62 00:04:35.695 --> 00:04:42.300 Forbidden poetry. How exciting. And finally, FOMO defines the 63 00:04:42.300 --> 00:04:46.780 experience of dating or dating apps. New research out of a 64 00:04:46.780 --> 00:04:51.340 combined team from Austria and Stanford published in New Media 65 00:04:51.340 --> 00:04:54.555 and Society finds that algorithmic feeds drive 66 00:04:54.555 --> 00:04:57.915 engagement in dating app use, keeping people swiping for 67 00:04:57.915 --> 00:05:02.635 longer periods of time. But the more someone swipes, the more 68 00:05:02.635 --> 00:05:05.355 they apparently trust the algorithm will bring them the 69 00:05:05.355 --> 00:05:10.620 partner they're looking for, and those swipers also experience 70 00:05:10.620 --> 00:05:13.420 strong decision fatigue. 71 00:05:13.420 --> 00:05:17.180 Not swiping means they may miss the perfect mate, but swiping is 72 00:05:17.180 --> 00:05:22.300 exhausting and paralyzing. Swiped if you do, swiped if you 73 00:05:22.300 --> 00:05:27.575 don't. In show news this week, do you wish you could support 74 00:05:27.575 --> 00:05:32.135 Neverpost, but $48 a year is just too much? Well, great news 75 00:05:32.135 --> 00:05:35.920 because the Radiotopia fundraiser continues. This is 76 00:05:35.920 --> 00:05:40.400 your opportunity to support not just Neverpost, but every, every 77 00:05:40.400 --> 00:05:44.160 Radiotopia show all at once, ear hustle, hyperfixed articles of 78 00:05:44.160 --> 00:05:46.960 interest, proxy, the memory palace, the whole kit and 79 00:05:46.960 --> 00:05:53.485 caboodle with a single one time tax deductible donation or a 80 00:05:53.485 --> 00:05:54.205 recurring one. 81 00:05:54.205 --> 00:05:57.165 Those are also tax deductible. Isn't that exciting? Head to 82 00:05:57.165 --> 00:06:03.005 radiotopia.fm/donate to give a one time tax deductible donation 83 00:06:03.005 --> 00:06:07.550 or a recurring tax deductible donation. Help us do the thing 84 00:06:07.550 --> 00:06:12.510 we do. Do you wish you could support NeverPo's directly, but 85 00:06:12.510 --> 00:06:13.870 you go to neverpo.st. 86 00:06:13.870 --> 00:06:17.845 You look at all three tiers, and you think this is too confusing. 87 00:06:18.085 --> 00:06:21.685 Too many choices. Which tier is right for me? Well, good news, 88 00:06:21.685 --> 00:06:25.605 folks. We have a year end sale on for the month of December. 89 00:06:25.605 --> 00:06:31.460 You can get our $7 and $12 tiers for the price of our lowest 90 00:06:31.460 --> 00:06:39.060 tier, $4. That's $4 each. Now to be clear, those $7 and $12 tiers 91 00:06:39.220 --> 00:06:43.940 do and will always get you exactly the same thing as the $4 92 00:06:43.940 --> 00:06:47.775 tier, but on sale is what they are nonetheless. You may be 93 00:06:47.775 --> 00:06:52.815 wondering, Mike, this sounds like it makes no sense. You 94 00:06:52.815 --> 00:06:53.615 would be correct. 95 00:06:53.615 --> 00:06:57.775 You cannot get these deals direct from the homepage, so 96 00:06:57.775 --> 00:07:02.940 check the links in the show notes to see our $4, $7 tier and 97 00:07:02.940 --> 00:07:08.780 our $4, $12 tier. Get in on these holiday savings. Okay. 98 00:07:08.780 --> 00:07:10.860 That's the news I have for you this week. In this episode, 99 00:07:10.860 --> 00:07:14.060 Audrey talks with digital DIYer Drew Lighten. 100 00:07:14.060 --> 00:07:19.565 But first, once a year, for just a few hours, the lake in front 101 00:07:19.565 --> 00:07:26.445 of Hans' dad's house makes this secret sound, and it happened 102 00:07:26.445 --> 00:07:31.245 again just this week. So in our interstitials in this episode, 103 00:07:32.490 --> 00:07:34.090 lake laser gun. 104 00:07:36.090 --> 00:07:38.650 How cold do you think it is right now? Seven 105 00:07:38.650 --> 00:07:42.570 degrees. Is that for real? It was seven earlier. It's probably 106 00:07:42.570 --> 00:07:43.530 warmer now. 107 00:07:44.330 --> 00:07:45.450 It's probably eight. 108 00:07:48.625 --> 00:07:53.585 So what happened last night? The wind went down, 109 00:07:53.585 --> 00:07:55.745 and it got down to seven degrees, and it froze. Although, 110 00:07:55.745 --> 00:07:58.705 there you can see can see here, there's still a few open places. 111 00:07:59.600 --> 00:08:02.400 So you can see through the ice. You can't step on it. 112 00:08:02.400 --> 00:08:03.520 You can't walk on it. 113 00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:05.920 So we actually if we tap. 114 00:08:10.560 --> 00:08:15.565 So it's still thin, fresh, and it's one day window of making 115 00:08:15.565 --> 00:08:21.485 noises should be open. It should sound good. Okay. Okay. Here we 116 00:08:21.485 --> 00:08:21.645 go. 117 00:08:21.645 --> 00:08:46.725 Let me just get the get the volume up. So I throw the rocks 118 00:08:46.725 --> 00:08:49.685 sort of level with, like, as if I were skipping a rock, and the 119 00:08:49.685 --> 00:08:52.245 rock obviously doesn't go through the ice. It just skips 120 00:08:52.245 --> 00:08:55.850 across the top. And as it gets further and further out, it 121 00:08:55.850 --> 00:08:59.610 makes more of a resonant sound, which only happens one day of 122 00:08:59.610 --> 00:09:13.585 the year when it freezes. How big of a rock do you you can get 123 00:09:13.585 --> 00:09:14.705 get out there? 124 00:09:15.185 --> 00:09:18.145 Oh, they're about half inch. This these are three quarter. 125 00:09:18.145 --> 00:09:21.950 These two are three quarter of an inch, and they're pretty easy 126 00:09:21.950 --> 00:09:24.510 to toss. They don't need to be flat like a skipping stone. They 127 00:09:24.510 --> 00:09:25.630 can be round as better. 128 00:09:53.510 --> 00:09:56.470 Hello, friends. This is producer Audrey, Never 129 00:09:56.470 --> 00:09:59.830 Post resident librarian and researcher. You don't often hear 130 00:09:59.830 --> 00:10:02.565 my voice on the podcast, but I'm one of the people behind the 131 00:10:02.565 --> 00:10:06.245 scenes helping to frame and shape the segments. In our 132 00:10:06.245 --> 00:10:09.685 behind the scenes editorial conversations, we think a lot 133 00:10:09.685 --> 00:10:14.040 about how to trace where power resides in our relationship to 134 00:10:14.040 --> 00:10:17.560 technology and how technology shifts our relationships to 135 00:10:17.560 --> 00:10:20.280 ourselves and each other, how the physical infrastructure 136 00:10:20.280 --> 00:10:24.360 influences and obscures some of these dynamics. And we think 137 00:10:24.360 --> 00:10:28.360 about how we, in turn, unveil, shape, and interrogate these 138 00:10:28.360 --> 00:10:31.245 systems, both individually and collectively. 139 00:10:31.485 --> 00:10:34.365 I am really interested in stories about people who are 140 00:10:34.365 --> 00:10:39.005 engaging with these questions directly. So I was really lucky 141 00:10:39.005 --> 00:10:42.285 recently to have a conversation with Drew Leighton. He's a 142 00:10:42.285 --> 00:10:46.140 software engineer, blogger, and all around really fun guy to 143 00:10:46.140 --> 00:10:50.540 chat with. We found Drew through a blog post with the subtitle, 144 00:10:50.940 --> 00:10:53.500 in a world where corporations have detached buying from 145 00:10:53.500 --> 00:10:57.775 owning, one man attempts to do something radical, build his own 146 00:10:57.775 --> 00:11:02.655 cloud. I was really excited to hear the story of Drew because 147 00:11:02.655 --> 00:11:06.095 he's engaging really directly with this question in his own 148 00:11:06.095 --> 00:11:09.695 home, in his own life, and I wanted to hear what he's 149 00:11:09.695 --> 00:11:10.255 learned. 150 00:11:10.255 --> 00:11:13.940 Spoiler, He did end up here. 151 00:11:14.020 --> 00:11:18.020 I think that this is not something I would recommend 152 00:11:18.020 --> 00:11:23.540 to most people nor is a future that I think I personally am 153 00:11:23.540 --> 00:11:24.340 going to fight for. 154 00:11:24.615 --> 00:11:40.290 But this is where we started. Hi, Drew. 155 00:11:40.290 --> 00:11:41.170 How's it going? 156 00:11:41.170 --> 00:11:45.410 Going great. I want you to, if you could, tell 157 00:11:45.410 --> 00:11:47.570 us your name and who you are. 158 00:11:48.130 --> 00:11:52.610 Cool. So my name is Drew Lighten. I'm a software 159 00:11:52.610 --> 00:11:57.275 engineer and a blogger. I write code, and I write a blog about 160 00:11:57.275 --> 00:11:57.915 code. 161 00:11:58.315 --> 00:12:02.715 Perfect. So I'm gonna drop us in here in a in a 162 00:12:02.715 --> 00:12:08.020 big picture question first. What is the cloud? 163 00:12:16.180 --> 00:12:20.485 Totally. I think that to understand what we mean 164 00:12:20.485 --> 00:12:24.485 when we say the cloud, it's important to know, like, what 165 00:12:24.485 --> 00:12:28.405 physically the cloud is. What the cloud is is actually just a 166 00:12:28.405 --> 00:12:32.405 series of computers that are usually racked in big data 167 00:12:32.405 --> 00:12:36.560 centers all across the world that all can communicate to each 168 00:12:36.560 --> 00:12:41.440 other extremely fast to be able to do, like, distributed 169 00:12:41.440 --> 00:12:47.280 processing of, like, computer stuff that allows you and me to 170 00:12:47.280 --> 00:12:52.465 access the data that exists on all of those computers in a 171 00:12:52.465 --> 00:12:54.785 fast, reliable, and efficient way. 172 00:12:55.025 --> 00:12:58.945 Thank you so much. That's very helpful. The cloud 173 00:12:58.945 --> 00:13:03.000 sounds so soft and fluffy and innocent, but it's really all 174 00:13:03.000 --> 00:13:05.080 metal wires and fans. 175 00:13:05.320 --> 00:13:10.040 Yes. Metals metal wires, fans, loud electricity 176 00:13:10.440 --> 00:13:15.000 with very few people really, like, touching the actual 177 00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:20.725 computer part. And then a lot a lot of code and, like, 178 00:13:20.725 --> 00:13:24.485 infrastructure tooling that allows developers like me to 179 00:13:24.485 --> 00:13:27.685 kind of be completely abstracted away from the physical part of 180 00:13:27.685 --> 00:13:33.430 the Internet. The fluffiness is that. It's that I, as a person 181 00:13:33.430 --> 00:13:37.270 that makes stuff on the Internet, don't have to think at 182 00:13:37.270 --> 00:13:40.950 all about the hardware, and I just get to think about the 183 00:13:40.950 --> 00:13:41.990 thing that I'm making. 184 00:13:41.990 --> 00:13:46.455 And same with people on the other side, like you and me, 185 00:13:46.455 --> 00:13:49.895 people that also consume applications, it feels fluffy 186 00:13:49.895 --> 00:13:51.895 and nice because we don't have to deal with any of the 187 00:13:51.895 --> 00:13:52.535 management. 188 00:13:53.095 --> 00:13:56.135 I want you to take me back to early autumn of last 189 00:13:56.135 --> 00:14:02.330 year. And what was sort of the ecology of your cloud services 190 00:14:02.330 --> 00:14:06.410 storage apps? What was your life like in relationship to the 191 00:14:06.410 --> 00:14:07.850 cloud last year? 192 00:14:07.850 --> 00:14:12.170 Yeah. So last year, I was kind of taking stock of 193 00:14:12.170 --> 00:14:18.165 my, like, digital tools and found myself kinda like most 194 00:14:18.165 --> 00:14:21.285 people just thinking about all of the subscription services 195 00:14:21.285 --> 00:14:24.645 that I had gained over the years. I've got Audible for 196 00:14:24.645 --> 00:14:29.300 audiobooks. I've got my Kindle books hosted with Amazon. We're 197 00:14:29.300 --> 00:14:31.140 paying for Netflix and HBO. 198 00:14:31.300 --> 00:14:34.500 All of these, like, media services that we are paying a 199 00:14:34.500 --> 00:14:39.140 flat fee for, like, a few shows that we really like. And I just 200 00:14:39.140 --> 00:14:45.695 realized for the first time that I was living in a world where I 201 00:14:46.335 --> 00:14:50.815 essentially owned nothing and was paying for the privilege of 202 00:14:50.815 --> 00:14:55.420 being able to access stuff that in some cases, I had even 203 00:14:55.420 --> 00:14:55.980 bought. 204 00:14:56.140 --> 00:14:58.380 And they can take it away at any time. 205 00:14:58.380 --> 00:15:01.260 Not only can they take it away at any time, they 206 00:15:01.260 --> 00:15:06.460 can also completely change the terms of that rental agreement. 207 00:15:06.895 --> 00:15:10.495 Whereas like, in most states, there's like renters rights for 208 00:15:10.495 --> 00:15:13.855 your house. There aren't really renters rights for the stuff 209 00:15:13.855 --> 00:15:16.815 that you access on the Internet. That's true. 210 00:15:16.815 --> 00:15:19.135 How did this make you feel? What was your dominant 211 00:15:19.135 --> 00:15:21.775 emotion? Or there could be a palette of emotions here. 212 00:15:22.620 --> 00:15:27.740 Obviously, felt icky. But really what it felt 213 00:15:27.740 --> 00:15:32.620 like is that I was in this power dynamic between me and the 214 00:15:32.620 --> 00:15:39.395 company where the company is providing me space that I rent 215 00:15:39.395 --> 00:15:44.355 from them. And then on top of it all, thinking of about how all 216 00:15:44.355 --> 00:15:46.755 of these companies are also, like, sucking up our data and 217 00:15:46.755 --> 00:15:51.475 then selling it back to, like, advertisers and stuff. Not only 218 00:15:51.475 --> 00:15:55.140 am I renting the ability to access things that I'm supposed 219 00:15:55.140 --> 00:15:59.380 to own while accessing the thing I'm supposed to own, they're 220 00:15:59.380 --> 00:16:05.140 taxing me even more for it. It felt like I was in some sort of 221 00:16:05.375 --> 00:16:10.735 feudalistic techno dystopia where these corporations are 222 00:16:10.735 --> 00:16:15.535 landlords and I'm a serf with no power and no freedom. 223 00:16:16.095 --> 00:16:18.735 Yeah. So I was taking stock of this relationship I have where 224 00:16:18.735 --> 00:16:22.420 essentially everything I own is rented space from companies like 225 00:16:22.420 --> 00:16:28.980 HBO, Netflix, Amazon, like Audible. And then I received an 226 00:16:28.980 --> 00:16:34.020 email like many other Kindle customers from Amazon saying 227 00:16:34.020 --> 00:16:38.625 that the Kindle platform would no longer be supporting this 228 00:16:38.625 --> 00:16:43.025 feature that allowed you to download and back up copies of 229 00:16:43.025 --> 00:16:47.910 your books. So receiving this announcement from Amazon saying 230 00:16:47.910 --> 00:16:51.030 that they were deprecating that feature and that the only way 231 00:16:51.190 --> 00:16:54.630 that I and millions of Kindle customers would be able to 232 00:16:54.630 --> 00:16:58.710 access their books would now be through the Kindle app or the 233 00:16:59.030 --> 00:17:05.195 Kindle device did not sit super well with me. So I wrote a 234 00:17:05.195 --> 00:17:12.955 script actually to scrape the Amazon library, like, page where 235 00:17:12.955 --> 00:17:16.155 you get to view and download your books because they don't 236 00:17:15.930 --> 00:17:17.610 they didn't give you a bulk download. 237 00:17:17.610 --> 00:17:21.530 You had to do this individually. So after downloading all my 238 00:17:21.530 --> 00:17:25.770 books, I decided to try to explore alternatives. 239 00:17:25.850 --> 00:17:29.290 So you are a highly technical person. 240 00:17:29.450 --> 00:17:29.850 Mhmm. 241 00:17:29.850 --> 00:17:30.570 What did you do? 242 00:17:31.165 --> 00:17:36.445 I know that there are a lot of people in what's 243 00:17:36.445 --> 00:17:41.565 called, like, the self hosted community where they use open 244 00:17:41.565 --> 00:17:47.400 source alternatives to popular cloud platforms and and run it 245 00:17:47.400 --> 00:17:50.920 themselves on their own own server at home. So when we were 246 00:17:50.920 --> 00:17:56.840 talking before about what is the cloud, they basically decide to, 247 00:17:56.840 --> 00:18:00.935 with a fleet of tools and a lot of technical work, build their 248 00:18:00.935 --> 00:18:07.255 own cloud in their house. And because I'm a person that was 249 00:18:07.255 --> 00:18:11.655 dealing kind of with this, like, feeling of a lack of control and 250 00:18:11.655 --> 00:18:15.240 also someone with the technical skills to believe that I could 251 00:18:15.240 --> 00:18:18.920 gain back that control, I dove straight into this community, 252 00:18:18.920 --> 00:18:22.440 tried to learn as much as possible, and ended up actually 253 00:18:22.440 --> 00:18:27.185 building something that my wife and I can use to self host and 254 00:18:27.185 --> 00:18:29.265 replace a lot of cloud services. 255 00:18:29.345 --> 00:18:33.185 I love this. And I love I'm Is this a collaborative 256 00:18:33.185 --> 00:18:35.505 project between you and your wife? 257 00:18:35.665 --> 00:18:37.105 This is so interesting. 258 00:18:37.105 --> 00:18:39.580 How does that relationship work? Because it's 259 00:18:39.580 --> 00:18:41.020 a very specific kind of 260 00:18:41.180 --> 00:18:41.580 Mhmm. 261 00:18:41.580 --> 00:18:43.580 Technical choice you've made as a couple. 262 00:18:43.740 --> 00:18:48.060 Yes. I think that I had really maybe naively 263 00:18:48.060 --> 00:18:53.665 optimistic hopes that this would be rather easy to do. Like, I 264 00:18:53.665 --> 00:18:57.105 have a lot of technical skills about how to deploy software 265 00:18:57.265 --> 00:19:01.985 that I figured would match pretty well one to one. What I 266 00:19:02.305 --> 00:19:06.145 didn't expect is the amount of complexity that can come when 267 00:19:06.145 --> 00:19:12.450 you try to build a home server that is accessible via the 268 00:19:12.450 --> 00:19:17.250 normal Internet that isn't public. Like, I didn't want all 269 00:19:17.250 --> 00:19:21.730 of my, like, cloud hosted services, my, like, personal 270 00:19:21.730 --> 00:19:27.485 Google Photos, our personal ebook library to be accessible 271 00:19:27.485 --> 00:19:30.365 to anyone who knew any sort of login credential. 272 00:19:30.525 --> 00:19:34.445 I wanted to make sure that it was as firewalled as possible 273 00:19:34.845 --> 00:19:39.245 for both the security of our stuff and also our home Internet 274 00:19:39.620 --> 00:19:43.780 and still have the convenience of being able to be on a, like, 275 00:19:43.780 --> 00:19:48.500 five g network and be able to back up a video I just took of 276 00:19:48.500 --> 00:19:53.735 our new baby. I think that was the kind of requirements 277 00:19:53.735 --> 00:19:58.935 analysis that ended up being more difficult than making a 278 00:19:58.935 --> 00:20:02.855 really clean UI experience, which a lot of these tools kinda 279 00:20:02.855 --> 00:20:08.880 give to you out of the box just by nature of how invested a lot 280 00:20:08.880 --> 00:20:12.240 of these open source communities are around making these tools as 281 00:20:12.240 --> 00:20:13.200 good as possible. 282 00:20:13.600 --> 00:20:16.240 I think we're ready for the technical. 283 00:20:16.240 --> 00:20:16.800 Sure. 284 00:20:16.800 --> 00:20:20.320 I think I'm ready to let it wash over me and enjoy 285 00:20:20.320 --> 00:20:20.560 it. 286 00:20:21.745 --> 00:20:22.625 Okay. Okay. Okay. 287 00:20:22.625 --> 00:20:25.425 So once you've made the decision, what's the 288 00:20:25.425 --> 00:20:28.225 first thing you did? Where did you start? And then talk us 289 00:20:28.225 --> 00:20:31.265 through what bits and pieces you bought and assembled. How did 290 00:20:31.265 --> 00:20:32.065 you do this? 291 00:20:32.385 --> 00:20:37.520 Cool. I bought a Lenovo p five twenty, which is a 292 00:20:37.520 --> 00:20:41.280 decommissioned server grade computer that has a 3.7 293 00:20:41.280 --> 00:20:45.520 gigahertz Intel Xeon processor with a 128 gigabytes of RAM, 294 00:20:45.760 --> 00:20:49.615 which I then installed a GTX sixteen sixty Ti graphics card 295 00:20:49.615 --> 00:20:53.775 with six gigabytes of VRAM into so that I could do quick audio 296 00:20:53.775 --> 00:20:58.815 and video encoding. I flashed a 500 gigabyte SSD with Proxmox, 297 00:20:58.815 --> 00:21:02.620 which is a hypervisor sort of software package, and set up 298 00:21:02.620 --> 00:21:06.940 four eight terabyte hard drives in a merger FS pool with 299 00:21:06.940 --> 00:21:10.460 SnapRaid, which allowed me to have drive parity in case one of 300 00:21:10.460 --> 00:21:14.060 them failed. And then I added a two terabyte NVMe SSD to use as 301 00:21:14.060 --> 00:21:17.145 a storage cache. That's the hardware. 302 00:21:17.145 --> 00:21:20.825 After that, I installed the Tailscale, which is a really 303 00:21:20.825 --> 00:21:27.625 great VPN, client, and created an Ubuntu LXC container, which 304 00:21:27.625 --> 00:21:31.160 is like a virtual environment running Linux, which I installed 305 00:21:31.160 --> 00:21:34.680 the Tailscale and Docker onto that virtual machine, pulled 306 00:21:34.680 --> 00:21:37.960 down a GitHub repo that I had made that set up a bunch of 307 00:21:37.960 --> 00:21:41.400 Docker Compose files, which is another way of doing virtual 308 00:21:42.440 --> 00:21:45.705 virtualization for running apps. And then I hacked into the 309 00:21:45.705 --> 00:21:50.425 mainframe and ran Docker Compose up d, and finally, all of my 310 00:21:50.425 --> 00:21:53.065 stuff was done. Yes. 311 00:21:55.145 --> 00:21:58.650 I feel I feel that I knew, like, half of the things 312 00:21:58.650 --> 00:22:05.210 you said. So what did you have at the end of all of this 313 00:22:05.210 --> 00:22:05.930 tinkering? 314 00:22:05.930 --> 00:22:08.490 So at the end of it all, I had four open source 315 00:22:08.490 --> 00:22:12.010 alternatives to popular cloud hosted apps that my wife and I 316 00:22:12.010 --> 00:22:14.735 had been using. One of them is called Image, which is a 317 00:22:14.735 --> 00:22:19.135 complete clone of Google Photos that has a mobile app, great 318 00:22:19.135 --> 00:22:22.655 organization, and backup features. It has local machine 319 00:22:22.655 --> 00:22:26.815 learning for, like, photo based search similar to what you'd get 320 00:22:26.815 --> 00:22:31.590 through iCloud or Google Photos. I had an ebook library 321 00:22:31.590 --> 00:22:36.710 management tool called Calibre or Calibre Web that allows you 322 00:22:36.710 --> 00:22:41.030 to organize backup EPUB files and with some, like, clever 323 00:22:41.030 --> 00:22:46.395 hacking, actually have them appear wirelessly on your Kobo 324 00:22:46.395 --> 00:22:51.435 or Kindle device. I had an audiobook library tool called 325 00:22:51.435 --> 00:22:55.755 Audio Bookshelf, which is another just open source version 326 00:22:55.755 --> 00:22:57.280 of Audible. 327 00:22:57.280 --> 00:23:01.840 And it also has this fun feature that lets you treat audiobooks 328 00:23:01.840 --> 00:23:07.040 like podcasts. So you can have, like, RSS feeds of audiobooks 329 00:23:07.040 --> 00:23:11.025 that make them all the chapters appear as different files as if 330 00:23:11.025 --> 00:23:13.985 they're, like, in a podcast, which is very cool. And the last 331 00:23:13.985 --> 00:23:18.705 one is an open source alternative to, like, Netflix or 332 00:23:18.705 --> 00:23:22.545 Disney plus called Jellyfin, which is just a streaming 333 00:23:22.545 --> 00:23:25.505 service to watch home home videos or legally acquired 334 00:23:25.505 --> 00:23:32.120 movies and TV. And the entire computer, I also use as, like, a 335 00:23:32.120 --> 00:23:36.680 NAS, a network attached storage device so that my wife and I can 336 00:23:36.680 --> 00:23:40.600 back up our computers and that I can access all of my, like, 337 00:23:40.805 --> 00:23:45.445 swathes of video files and not have to pay Google a gazillion 338 00:23:45.445 --> 00:23:47.365 dollars to back up all that stuff for me. 339 00:23:47.365 --> 00:23:50.245 Beautiful. I'm so proud of you. I just met you, 340 00:23:50.245 --> 00:23:51.525 but I'm proud. I'm proud of 341 00:23:51.525 --> 00:23:52.405 you. Thanks. 342 00:23:55.880 --> 00:23:59.400 Do you remember the first time you turned it on 343 00:23:59.400 --> 00:24:00.440 and it worked? 344 00:24:00.680 --> 00:24:04.440 I remember so the first time that I booted 345 00:24:04.440 --> 00:24:08.040 everything up after installing all the hardware is always like 346 00:24:08.040 --> 00:24:13.855 a scary time. Because when you're sitting in a room with 347 00:24:13.935 --> 00:24:18.655 the side panel off of a decommissioned server that's ten 348 00:24:18.655 --> 00:24:22.335 or twelve years old, and you bought it on eBay and you have 349 00:24:22.335 --> 00:24:25.720 no idea how well someone took care of this thing. And then 350 00:24:25.720 --> 00:24:30.280 you've sat there with all of your random woodworking tools to 351 00:24:30.440 --> 00:24:34.760 try to precisely install a bunch of hard drives that cost you a 352 00:24:34.760 --> 00:24:39.335 lot of money. And and also, like, that's that's scary. And 353 00:24:39.335 --> 00:24:42.935 when the thing boots up and does some horrible beep because 354 00:24:43.095 --> 00:24:45.655 computer manufacturers don't care how you feel when you turn 355 00:24:45.655 --> 00:24:49.095 on a computer, and you don't know whether that beep was good 356 00:24:49.095 --> 00:24:49.415 or bad. 357 00:24:49.920 --> 00:24:53.200 Right. But it turns out to be good and it just shows up on 358 00:24:53.200 --> 00:24:57.040 your display and you can start installing software, that's that 359 00:24:57.040 --> 00:25:01.040 is a magic moment. Because at least for me, someone that sits 360 00:25:01.040 --> 00:25:05.435 on the software side of technical stuff, the being done 361 00:25:05.435 --> 00:25:08.555 with the hardware aspect is always a really nice feeling. 362 00:25:09.115 --> 00:25:14.315 The first time that I actually booted up the applications, 363 00:25:14.315 --> 00:25:15.675 which I did in stages. Right? 364 00:25:15.675 --> 00:25:19.520 Like, I started with Calibre, installing this application that 365 00:25:19.520 --> 00:25:24.880 I had never run before. And also with the added complexity of, 366 00:25:24.880 --> 00:25:28.800 like, it's sitting on a computer that doesn't have a monitor 367 00:25:28.960 --> 00:25:33.105 because it's a server. That was cool to see it appear in my 368 00:25:33.105 --> 00:25:36.145 browser and, like, be able to log in and start setting this 369 00:25:36.145 --> 00:25:42.625 up. Exciting moment. The second exciting moment was when I did 370 00:25:42.625 --> 00:25:47.880 the giant library dump from Google where I downloaded our 371 00:25:47.880 --> 00:25:51.160 entire Google Photos library, which was over three terabytes 372 00:25:51.160 --> 00:25:57.400 of photos and videos, and ran this crazy amazing tool that 373 00:25:57.400 --> 00:26:00.675 someone in the open source community had made that takes 374 00:26:00.755 --> 00:26:05.635 your Google archive, which are these massive, like, 50 gigabyte 375 00:26:05.635 --> 00:26:11.235 zip files and pulls out all of the media, pulls all out all the 376 00:26:11.235 --> 00:26:15.510 metadata, converts it to something that Image can read 377 00:26:15.510 --> 00:26:18.310 and use, and uploads it all to its database. 378 00:26:18.710 --> 00:26:24.710 And that took, I think, around six hours. And then all of my 379 00:26:24.710 --> 00:26:31.875 stuff appeared on my phone in a way that I had not really 380 00:26:31.875 --> 00:26:38.595 experienced before because it's like when you move house and 381 00:26:38.675 --> 00:26:43.400 you're seeing things that you knew you had but have not looked 382 00:26:43.400 --> 00:26:46.760 at in a while, that was this experience moving everything to 383 00:26:46.760 --> 00:26:50.600 a self hosted server, a digital move in a literal and a 384 00:26:50.600 --> 00:26:54.200 figurative sense. And so you're unpacking boxes and you're 385 00:26:54.200 --> 00:26:56.600 trying to make sure that everything survived the move. 386 00:26:56.805 --> 00:27:00.165 And in that way, you're re experiencing a lot of your your 387 00:27:00.165 --> 00:27:01.205 digital archive. 388 00:27:01.205 --> 00:27:04.085 Beautiful. You'd be a great librarian. 389 00:27:07.685 --> 00:27:09.445 I think I'm too disorganized. But 390 00:27:09.925 --> 00:27:13.285 I don't think so. Not based on what I've heard so 391 00:27:12.780 --> 00:27:13.260 far. 392 00:27:13.900 --> 00:27:16.220 Yeah. You're seeing the most pristine part of my 393 00:27:16.220 --> 00:27:16.860 office. So 394 00:27:19.740 --> 00:27:22.860 Well, also the the values and the and the care that 395 00:27:22.860 --> 00:27:27.900 you have in your relationship to intentionality with technology 396 00:27:27.900 --> 00:27:30.525 is is very librarian coded. 397 00:27:30.765 --> 00:27:34.525 This moment of bringing everything from 398 00:27:34.525 --> 00:27:39.085 Google's cloud down to my own server, what reminded me of 399 00:27:39.085 --> 00:27:45.460 that, like, ah, this is me really doing the work to curate, 400 00:27:45.540 --> 00:27:53.700 maintain, and keep a durable backup personal archive of my 401 00:27:53.700 --> 00:27:57.765 stuff and, like, who I am and who my wife and I are at this 402 00:27:57.765 --> 00:28:02.885 moment in time and in our past. Yeah. It it was like a powerful 403 00:28:02.885 --> 00:28:08.740 moment of reflection and, like, wow factor. Like, woah. Wouldn't 404 00:28:08.740 --> 00:28:13.300 it be so crazy if everyone had access to do something like 405 00:28:13.300 --> 00:28:13.860 this? 406 00:28:14.180 --> 00:28:18.580 And almost an immediate acknowledgment that, like, this 407 00:28:18.580 --> 00:28:19.300 is not the way. 408 00:28:47.655 --> 00:28:51.255 Do you feel comfortable sharing what room 409 00:28:51.255 --> 00:28:53.015 you self host in? 410 00:28:53.255 --> 00:29:01.440 Yeah. So we live in not a super large townhouse. So 411 00:29:01.840 --> 00:29:06.080 our computer, our self hosted server is actually right next to 412 00:29:06.080 --> 00:29:07.760 our couch in our living room. 413 00:29:09.280 --> 00:29:10.480 Can you hear it? 414 00:29:10.560 --> 00:29:13.280 Fortunately, you cannot hear it, really. There's, 415 00:29:13.280 --> 00:29:16.595 like, a little bit of humming and, like, beeps and boops, you 416 00:29:16.595 --> 00:29:19.715 know, like, of a normal old computer that's kind of running 417 00:29:19.715 --> 00:29:23.795 in your house, but not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, 418 00:29:24.115 --> 00:29:26.995 which was also part of the requirement for me and my wife 419 00:29:26.995 --> 00:29:31.390 is that we want this. We want our home to not feel like a data 420 00:29:31.390 --> 00:29:33.230 center. Yeah. Yeah. 421 00:29:33.230 --> 00:29:38.110 Big part of it. Exactly. In terms of location, it made the 422 00:29:38.110 --> 00:29:40.430 most sense to put it in our living room mostly because 423 00:29:40.430 --> 00:29:42.785 that's where our Wi Fi router router is. So 424 00:29:43.105 --> 00:29:46.545 I love knowing painting the picture of of what 425 00:29:46.545 --> 00:29:49.905 does this actually look and feel like to do something like this 426 00:29:49.905 --> 00:29:53.345 in your actual home. And that you you see it, you interact 427 00:29:53.345 --> 00:29:56.570 with it as an object constantly. 428 00:29:56.970 --> 00:30:00.490 And not yeah. And to color that even more. So the 429 00:30:00.490 --> 00:30:03.770 computer that is running all of our services that is sitting in 430 00:30:03.770 --> 00:30:07.290 our living room, like, just chugging away twenty four seven 431 00:30:07.290 --> 00:30:12.945 is also a thing that I use to, like, put my coffee on in the 432 00:30:12.945 --> 00:30:15.185 morning when I'm sitting on the couch. Like, this is a real 433 00:30:15.185 --> 00:30:19.345 piece of technology that exists almost as decor, as useful 434 00:30:19.345 --> 00:30:23.905 furniture in in the physical realm as much as in the digital. 435 00:30:24.480 --> 00:30:27.600 Is there, like, a particular day in the life of 436 00:30:27.600 --> 00:30:31.920 hosting your own server that you that is an interesting day? 437 00:30:31.920 --> 00:30:34.640 So in the day to day, I think that it's set up 438 00:30:34.640 --> 00:30:38.160 well enough that I don't think about it. Like, I have image on 439 00:30:38.160 --> 00:30:42.035 my phone and it looks I'm looking at it right now and it 440 00:30:42.035 --> 00:30:44.835 looks identical to Google Photos. It's currently backing 441 00:30:44.835 --> 00:30:48.995 up all the photos that I took, like, a few minutes ago. And so 442 00:30:48.995 --> 00:30:54.970 in general, I think it's pretty hands off where on the non 443 00:30:54.970 --> 00:30:59.690 normal days where I I do have to think about it, the day to day 444 00:30:59.690 --> 00:31:03.450 experience is me going into the terminal, SSH ing into my 445 00:31:03.450 --> 00:31:09.325 server, and reading logs of the, like, Docker files that are 446 00:31:09.325 --> 00:31:12.125 running and trying to figure out why something broke, what went 447 00:31:12.125 --> 00:31:16.205 wrong, looking at memory usage graphs, looking at CPU spikes, 448 00:31:16.765 --> 00:31:19.950 trying to understand why randomly my graphics card 449 00:31:19.950 --> 00:31:23.790 disconnected from the entire Linux container, you know. But 450 00:31:23.790 --> 00:31:26.670 that stuff is pretty few and far between now. 451 00:31:26.990 --> 00:31:31.550 It's both much more stable and much less stable than I think I 452 00:31:31.550 --> 00:31:33.950 thought at the beginning, like in different ways. 453 00:31:34.270 --> 00:31:40.405 Okay. Yeah. So how does this self hosted experience 454 00:31:40.405 --> 00:31:45.925 feel compared to your rented cloud experience? 455 00:31:46.085 --> 00:31:49.320 All in all, I think that these open source 456 00:31:49.320 --> 00:31:54.440 alternatives provide a pretty good one to one to cloud based 457 00:31:54.440 --> 00:31:59.000 options. A lot of them don't have as clean or as modern of a 458 00:31:59.000 --> 00:32:04.595 UI as you might want. But things like image and jellyfin, I'd say 459 00:32:04.595 --> 00:32:08.435 are as good, if not better, UI experiences. And a lot of that 460 00:32:08.435 --> 00:32:12.675 has to do with the great work of the open source maintainers who 461 00:32:12.675 --> 00:32:17.950 put in all of the effort to not only make these run well on a 462 00:32:17.950 --> 00:32:22.430 lot of different types of hardware, but also put in a lot 463 00:32:22.430 --> 00:32:25.950 of time and effort into making the experience a good one where 464 00:32:25.950 --> 00:32:30.955 you would wouldn't miss the niceties of having a team of 400 465 00:32:30.955 --> 00:32:34.075 people at Google who spend every waking moment trying to get you 466 00:32:34.075 --> 00:32:35.275 to use Google Photos. 467 00:32:35.835 --> 00:32:40.555 Right. Do you think this is a sustainable 468 00:32:40.555 --> 00:32:46.360 choice for you and your wife and and your imminently to be born 469 00:32:46.360 --> 00:32:47.240 new child. 470 00:32:47.240 --> 00:32:47.640 Yeah. 471 00:32:47.640 --> 00:32:49.560 Yeah. Have you learned anything about your 472 00:32:49.560 --> 00:32:53.720 relationship through collaborating and working Oh. In 473 00:32:53.720 --> 00:32:54.840 this way together? 474 00:32:54.920 --> 00:32:58.645 I think we've definitely learned that we're 475 00:32:58.645 --> 00:33:09.445 hoarders. Like, I I think the experience of having to have on 476 00:33:09.445 --> 00:33:14.590 a hard drive in your home all of your important files, documents, 477 00:33:14.670 --> 00:33:22.110 everything is both, like, exciting and also an 478 00:33:22.190 --> 00:33:26.935 acknowledgment of, like, there are only so many resources and 479 00:33:26.935 --> 00:33:32.295 do we really need this video that I shot when I was, like, 18 480 00:33:32.375 --> 00:33:36.535 of me running home from from, like, getting groceries or 481 00:33:36.535 --> 00:33:41.790 whatever. Like like, there is a lot of, I think, feelings of 482 00:33:42.110 --> 00:33:47.150 less separation in terms of our relationship to, like, digital 483 00:33:47.150 --> 00:33:51.550 files and goods being feeling more physical and having a cost, 484 00:33:51.630 --> 00:33:54.030 which is, I think, something we didn't really think of before. 485 00:33:54.485 --> 00:33:58.165 And also means we have to have conversations together about 486 00:33:58.485 --> 00:34:01.605 similar to how you have to have conversations with your partner 487 00:34:01.605 --> 00:34:05.045 about, like, we only have so much closet space, you know? 488 00:34:05.125 --> 00:34:05.525 Yeah. 489 00:34:05.525 --> 00:34:08.405 Yeah. Maybe it's time for us to declutter. Like, you have to 490 00:34:08.405 --> 00:34:12.150 have that now with your digital life Yeah. In a way that you 491 00:34:12.150 --> 00:34:17.030 kind of don't when the the solution is just to throw more 492 00:34:17.030 --> 00:34:18.070 money at the problem. 493 00:34:18.150 --> 00:34:19.270 Yeah. Exactly. Pay for 494 00:34:19.270 --> 00:34:19.910 more storage. 495 00:34:19.910 --> 00:34:22.790 Sometimes friction in relationship can surface 496 00:34:22.790 --> 00:34:24.470 values and opportunities. 497 00:34:24.470 --> 00:34:27.325 Yes. Yeah. Exactly. And there are very new 498 00:34:27.325 --> 00:34:32.685 conversations we're having about who is in charge of curating the 499 00:34:32.685 --> 00:34:38.045 digital closet. A new chore that didn't exist before we had a 500 00:34:39.570 --> 00:34:43.330 humming, you know, piece of furniture that stores all of our 501 00:34:43.330 --> 00:34:43.890 digital life. 502 00:34:43.890 --> 00:34:46.370 I love this. Well, maybe we'll have to do a part 503 00:34:46.370 --> 00:34:51.410 two with your wife at some point. And the new baby and see 504 00:34:51.570 --> 00:34:55.915 follow-up with you in six months and see how it's all going. 505 00:34:55.995 --> 00:34:58.315 Yeah. There is a conversation we've been having 506 00:34:58.475 --> 00:35:02.955 about how does this new, like, piece of furniture, this new 507 00:35:02.955 --> 00:35:07.640 appliance, this tool we have affect, if at all, our kids' 508 00:35:07.640 --> 00:35:10.840 relationship with a computer? And what does this new tool 509 00:35:10.840 --> 00:35:16.680 enable us to do in terms of kind of curating and guiding their 510 00:35:16.680 --> 00:35:20.120 experience through the early stages of learning about the 511 00:35:20.120 --> 00:35:25.465 Internet, where we now have our own little Internet that is, 512 00:35:25.465 --> 00:35:30.985 like, more safe. Right? And, like, private and controlled by 513 00:35:30.985 --> 00:35:31.465 us. 514 00:35:31.705 --> 00:35:36.040 And what does that enable us to do in terms of teaching and 515 00:35:36.040 --> 00:35:38.120 learning about how to use these tools? 516 00:35:38.840 --> 00:35:43.800 Did building your own cloud in your house, did it 517 00:35:43.800 --> 00:35:46.200 feel like a radical act? 518 00:35:47.855 --> 00:35:51.455 Building a home server and self hosting did feel 519 00:35:52.255 --> 00:35:56.335 like a radical thing to do, mostly because I don't know 520 00:35:56.335 --> 00:36:02.175 anyone else that's done it. And sometimes that makes you feel 521 00:36:02.750 --> 00:36:08.270 like a pioneer. In this case, it made me feel slightly, like, 522 00:36:08.270 --> 00:36:13.630 crazy. Like, there has to be a reason that I don't know anyone 523 00:36:13.630 --> 00:36:15.445 else that is doing this. Yeah. 524 00:36:15.445 --> 00:36:18.645 You know, not to spoil it too much, but there was something. I 525 00:36:18.645 --> 00:36:22.165 was like, this was this was not a trivial thing to do. Yeah. 526 00:36:22.565 --> 00:36:25.125 Why do you speculate you don't know anyone 527 00:36:25.125 --> 00:36:26.405 else doing this? 528 00:36:26.645 --> 00:36:29.610 I think there's a lot of reasons that people don't 529 00:36:29.610 --> 00:36:34.570 self host ubiquitously. One of them is, for most people, it's 530 00:36:34.570 --> 00:36:38.970 technically inaccessible. Convincing some people I know in 531 00:36:38.970 --> 00:36:43.535 my life to build a computer would be very hard. To convince 532 00:36:43.535 --> 00:36:49.455 them to build a computer that will run hypervisor software, to 533 00:36:49.855 --> 00:36:56.575 run Linux containers with Docker, and have a VPN setup 534 00:36:56.575 --> 00:37:00.370 with Tailscale, that seems impossible. 535 00:37:02.690 --> 00:37:06.450 Even as a person who is wants to do all of those 536 00:37:06.450 --> 00:37:09.970 things, the learning curve feels extreme. 537 00:37:10.770 --> 00:37:13.785 Yeah. I I think so that that's a big part of it. I 538 00:37:13.785 --> 00:37:17.305 think the technical inaccessibility is probably 80% 539 00:37:17.305 --> 00:37:21.385 of why we don't see more people doing this. I think the other 540 00:37:21.385 --> 00:37:25.705 20% is cost. 541 00:37:26.505 --> 00:37:27.625 Okay. Say more. 542 00:37:28.250 --> 00:37:33.370 It wasn't cheap to do this. And I did it on a 543 00:37:33.370 --> 00:37:37.050 pretty low budget in comparison to some people in this 544 00:37:37.050 --> 00:37:43.155 community. I bought a twelve year old decommissioned server 545 00:37:43.155 --> 00:37:51.395 off of eBay for around $330 that had, like, a ton of RAM and a 546 00:37:51.395 --> 00:38:00.310 relatively fine CPU. I spent close to, I think, $800 on hard 547 00:38:00.310 --> 00:38:05.350 drives. Now you don't have to do that, but I did that because I 548 00:38:05.350 --> 00:38:07.270 have a lot of video files that I wanted to store. 549 00:38:07.510 --> 00:38:12.235 I bought stuff that you probably wouldn't ever need, like a 550 00:38:12.235 --> 00:38:18.715 graphics card and an NVMe SSD, which is like a very fast hard 551 00:38:18.715 --> 00:38:21.995 drive that you have in, like, your laptop and stuff. All like, 552 00:38:21.995 --> 00:38:25.860 all in all, total cost. And obviously, like, I'm a tech 553 00:38:25.860 --> 00:38:29.380 person and so I had a lot of this stuff lying around from 554 00:38:29.380 --> 00:38:32.900 other projects. But even if you just take the base computer, 555 00:38:32.900 --> 00:38:38.415 like investing $400 in something is not an like a no brainer 556 00:38:38.415 --> 00:38:42.255 decision, especially when you're comparing it to the cost of a 557 00:38:42.255 --> 00:38:46.655 hosted cloud solution, which costs $12 a month. 558 00:38:46.895 --> 00:38:50.255 Yeah. Do you think that people should be doing 559 00:38:50.255 --> 00:38:56.190 this? Like, in general, as a general approach to is this the 560 00:38:56.190 --> 00:38:57.390 sort of way forward? 561 00:38:57.470 --> 00:39:03.710 Mhmm. I think a world in which everyone is able 562 00:39:03.710 --> 00:39:08.255 to self host all of their own versions of applications and 563 00:39:08.815 --> 00:39:12.095 have, like, complete backups of their digital lives, own their 564 00:39:12.095 --> 00:39:18.110 own data, all of these idealistic ways of using and 565 00:39:18.110 --> 00:39:21.070 experiencing the Internet and making it personal. I think that 566 00:39:21.070 --> 00:39:26.590 vision and that underlying emotion of, like, both freedom 567 00:39:26.590 --> 00:39:32.110 and control totally vibe with me. That's why I did this thing. 568 00:39:33.505 --> 00:39:39.025 And yet, I think that this is not something I would recommend 569 00:39:39.025 --> 00:39:44.545 to most people nor is a future that I think I personally am 570 00:39:44.545 --> 00:39:45.745 going to fight for. 571 00:39:46.225 --> 00:39:50.690 And the reason is that I think that it creates a kind of 572 00:39:50.690 --> 00:39:56.130 suburban Internet where alongside your lawnmower and 573 00:39:56.130 --> 00:40:00.050 your car, you have a server that you have to maintain and take 574 00:40:00.050 --> 00:40:03.765 care of. I think that that's a really inefficient use of 575 00:40:03.765 --> 00:40:09.685 resources, is technically inaccessible for most people, 576 00:40:10.645 --> 00:40:16.350 and gets rid of a lot of the great stuff about the cloud. 577 00:40:17.310 --> 00:40:17.790 Yes. 578 00:40:17.790 --> 00:40:22.750 The cloud is this, like, abstraction away from this 579 00:40:22.750 --> 00:40:29.470 very complicated thing of figuring out how do I connect 580 00:40:30.335 --> 00:40:37.535 myself to data and information and files that are backed up and 581 00:40:37.535 --> 00:40:41.775 distributed and cached and all these things that make it super 582 00:40:41.775 --> 00:40:47.940 fast and simple and easy to do. That infrastructure is really a 583 00:40:48.260 --> 00:40:52.660 feat of engineering and is something that we really benefit 584 00:40:52.660 --> 00:40:56.820 from and shouldn't be a requirement for everyone to try 585 00:40:56.820 --> 00:41:01.245 to recreate for themselves. Yeah. I think, like, one of the 586 00:41:01.325 --> 00:41:06.045 fundamental problems with this vision of a completely self 587 00:41:06.045 --> 00:41:11.965 hosted future is that it assumes that isolated independent 588 00:41:11.965 --> 00:41:18.760 systems are virtuous. But, really, isolated independent 589 00:41:18.760 --> 00:41:21.080 systems are really inconvenient. 590 00:41:25.160 --> 00:41:29.825 Like, self hosting is, yeah, like, personalized and private 591 00:41:29.825 --> 00:41:35.985 and individual. But how then are we supposed to be able to have, 592 00:41:36.785 --> 00:41:42.225 like, photo albums that are shared amongst you and me if 593 00:41:41.900 --> 00:41:45.660 both of ours, like, the the amount of technological 594 00:41:45.660 --> 00:41:49.660 infrastructure we would have to create and that I'm I know 595 00:41:49.660 --> 00:41:52.620 people in this community are working on with, like, peer to 596 00:41:52.620 --> 00:41:58.515 peer networking and distributed, like like, protocols, that all 597 00:41:58.515 --> 00:42:04.915 seems cool. And, also, I think the easier and maybe more long 598 00:42:04.915 --> 00:42:09.075 term beneficial approach is that rather than us all owning our 599 00:42:09.075 --> 00:42:12.035 own clouds, we should just own the cloud. 600 00:42:12.780 --> 00:42:17.260 Yeah. So that's my that's my exact question for you 601 00:42:17.260 --> 00:42:21.820 is if we don't want to pay a corporate entity to, you know, 602 00:42:21.820 --> 00:42:25.740 rent cloud storage and building our own personal cloud is maybe 603 00:42:25.740 --> 00:42:29.135 not an option or even a desirable future as you've 604 00:42:29.295 --> 00:42:34.175 listed out for us reasons why not. Could you talk us through 605 00:42:34.415 --> 00:42:38.335 another vision of maybe building a communal shared Internet 606 00:42:38.335 --> 00:42:42.430 infrastructure? What would a community hosted cloud look 607 00:42:42.430 --> 00:42:43.710 like? How would it work? 608 00:42:43.710 --> 00:42:46.590 What would need to happen for us to get there? 609 00:42:47.390 --> 00:42:52.590 Yeah. I would love to imagine a world where along 610 00:42:52.590 --> 00:42:56.795 with your library card like, when you register to get a 611 00:42:56.795 --> 00:43:01.835 library card in your town, you also get access to, like, a 100 612 00:43:01.835 --> 00:43:07.355 gigabytes of file storage and access to a, like, publicly 613 00:43:07.355 --> 00:43:11.210 hosted, like, photo sharing platform, Google Drive 614 00:43:11.210 --> 00:43:17.050 alternative, that that vision seems unattainable until you 615 00:43:17.050 --> 00:43:23.370 realize that many corporations, nonprofit organizations, 616 00:43:24.415 --> 00:43:30.495 schools, all already provide that to their constituents. This 617 00:43:30.495 --> 00:43:35.455 idea that having some sort of public infrastructure to be able 618 00:43:35.455 --> 00:43:38.660 to provide services on the Internet that are more web two 619 00:43:38.660 --> 00:43:41.300 point o than web one point o, the idea that that's 620 00:43:41.300 --> 00:43:46.980 inaccessible, I think is wrong. The same process that I went 621 00:43:46.980 --> 00:43:51.935 through to set up a server in my house to have my wife and I be 622 00:43:51.935 --> 00:43:56.015 able to back up our photos, access our media. This is the 623 00:43:56.015 --> 00:44:00.495 same system that could be used amongst a community of people to 624 00:44:00.495 --> 00:44:06.310 have one or multiple servers or even set up hosted solutions in 625 00:44:06.310 --> 00:44:09.430 current data center infrastructure to be able to 626 00:44:09.430 --> 00:44:13.430 provide that to thousands of people instead of two. 627 00:44:13.830 --> 00:44:15.350 I don't think that that's crazy. 628 00:44:15.750 --> 00:44:18.630 It's not. It's not crazy at all. And it might be 629 00:44:18.630 --> 00:44:21.585 something that we need one day. 630 00:44:21.985 --> 00:44:27.345 Yeah. And even so I wrote an article talking about 631 00:44:27.345 --> 00:44:32.385 this experience, and someone reached out to me saying, hey. I 632 00:44:32.385 --> 00:44:38.140 live in Arizona, and I'm doing this. I am building public 633 00:44:38.140 --> 00:44:43.180 infrastructure for my town in Arizona and trying to work with 634 00:44:43.180 --> 00:44:49.035 my local municipality and the library to make this not, like, 635 00:44:49.035 --> 00:44:53.755 only marketed, but actually well established and sustainable. And 636 00:44:54.315 --> 00:44:59.195 his experience was that the hard part is not the tech. 637 00:44:59.275 --> 00:45:06.050 The hard part is convincing communities that the tech bros 638 00:45:06.210 --> 00:45:11.010 could actually provide a good public service to them. There is 639 00:45:11.010 --> 00:45:18.695 so much distrust around people that provide technology to us 640 00:45:18.695 --> 00:45:25.175 right now that the notion that the tools that are currently 641 00:45:25.175 --> 00:45:30.740 used by the lords to lord over us, the serfs, could be 642 00:45:30.740 --> 00:45:35.940 accessible to them in a way that's co owned and cooperative 643 00:45:36.900 --> 00:45:40.980 seems outlandish and, like, that it's got to be a scam. 644 00:45:42.165 --> 00:45:45.205 And maybe that's the work that has to be done to 645 00:45:45.205 --> 00:45:47.925 bring those communities into the process. 646 00:45:48.165 --> 00:45:50.485 I think that that is totally the work to be done. It 647 00:45:50.485 --> 00:45:55.360 is not we have solved the technical problems. The open 648 00:45:55.360 --> 00:45:58.400 source community, the self hosted community, they've done 649 00:45:58.400 --> 00:46:05.440 it. And now I think it is the work of us as technologists and 650 00:46:05.440 --> 00:46:09.520 people that are passionate about providing this to our 651 00:46:09.520 --> 00:46:17.065 communities to do the social work, to repair trust, and to 652 00:46:17.065 --> 00:46:23.225 actually build connections and relationships that allow a more 653 00:46:23.705 --> 00:46:27.910 community hosted and communal Internet to something that makes 654 00:46:28.150 --> 00:46:32.150 you really feel empowered and connected to your community and 655 00:46:32.150 --> 00:46:33.830 that this is co owned and shared. 656 00:46:33.830 --> 00:46:35.590 I'm literally crying right now. 657 00:46:35.590 --> 00:46:38.070 No. And that's all stuff that the Internet was 658 00:46:38.070 --> 00:46:42.505 meant to be. Right? Like, this is the original vision of the 659 00:46:42.505 --> 00:46:43.385 Internet. Yeah. 660 00:46:43.385 --> 00:46:44.825 So there's just a lot of work to do. 661 00:46:44.825 --> 00:46:48.665 Yeah. Are you suggesting we feel hopeful about 662 00:46:48.665 --> 00:46:49.545 the Internet? 663 00:46:51.385 --> 00:46:55.010 I don't know. With all of the wackadoo stuff 664 00:46:55.010 --> 00:46:58.530 happening with AI and whether or not the Internet, you know, like 665 00:46:58.530 --> 00:47:02.530 dead Internet theory and all this stuff, I do feel like it's 666 00:47:02.530 --> 00:47:06.530 hard to have hope. But I really do believe in this, like, 667 00:47:06.530 --> 00:47:10.515 counter cultural idea of the alive Internet theory where 668 00:47:10.995 --> 00:47:14.915 these are places that we live and work. These are 669 00:47:15.555 --> 00:47:21.315 fundamentally public social spaces. And we, for thousands of 670 00:47:21.315 --> 00:47:27.090 years, have both struggled and figured out how to do public 671 00:47:27.090 --> 00:47:28.450 spaces pretty well. 672 00:47:29.410 --> 00:47:32.770 And it's just about leveraging all of that historical knowledge 673 00:47:32.850 --> 00:47:38.645 and tapping into the people that already have that information to 674 00:47:38.645 --> 00:47:42.805 make that happen, to make the Internet really feel alive and 675 00:47:42.805 --> 00:47:43.685 like ours again. 676 00:47:56.430 --> 00:47:59.870 Drew, thank you so much for joining us and sharing 677 00:47:59.870 --> 00:48:03.630 your This experience with was so much fun for me. I learned so 678 00:48:03.630 --> 00:48:09.285 much. If people wanna find you online, where can they find you? 679 00:48:09.845 --> 00:48:14.565 Yeah. So I can be found mostly only these days at 680 00:48:14.565 --> 00:48:20.690 drewlighton.com. That's drewlyton.com. I post a 681 00:48:20.690 --> 00:48:27.490 newsletter semi frequently with stories like this. So, yeah, if 682 00:48:27.490 --> 00:48:30.530 people enjoyed hearing me talk about this, maybe you'll enjoy 683 00:48:30.530 --> 00:48:31.970 reading words I've written about it. 684 00:49:09.805 --> 00:49:23.890 Five. I'll throw five this time. That that way 685 00:49:23.890 --> 00:49:25.330 you run out of rocks really quickly. 686 00:49:40.625 --> 00:49:43.985 Whoo. Starting to lose feeling in my fingers. 687 00:50:07.735 --> 00:50:12.850 That's awesome. And then if you're lucky, the ice, the sun 688 00:50:12.850 --> 00:50:15.650 will heat up the rocks. The rocks will melt through the ice, 689 00:50:15.650 --> 00:50:23.330 and you won't run into them when you're skating. Well, that was a 690 00:50:23.330 --> 00:50:29.585 lot of fun. That's the secret of the lake. 691 00:50:29.585 --> 00:50:33.745 Only one day of the year or only each time that it freezes, 692 00:50:33.745 --> 00:50:37.345 freshly frozen, the same day that it freezes, it makes that 693 00:50:37.345 --> 00:50:40.330 really resonant sound as you skip the rocks as they get 694 00:50:40.330 --> 00:50:41.290 further and further out. 695 00:50:54.415 --> 00:50:57.375 That sun is warm though. 696 00:50:57.455 --> 00:50:58.815 It helps. 697 00:51:08.780 --> 00:51:11.180 That is the show we have for you this week. We're 698 00:51:11.180 --> 00:51:13.740 gonna be back here in the main feed on Wednesday, December 10. 699 00:51:13.740 --> 00:51:19.020 Never post is made each and every two weeks by a team of six 700 00:51:19.020 --> 00:51:22.665 producers researching, writing, interviewing, editing, mixing, 701 00:51:22.665 --> 00:51:26.345 and scoring, and designing their hearts out. If you appreciate 702 00:51:26.345 --> 00:51:29.465 the work that we do and would like to help us continue to do 703 00:51:29.465 --> 00:51:37.040 it, please consider becoming a member for $4, $4, or $4 a month 704 00:51:37.040 --> 00:51:49.435 at neverpo.st today. Never Post's producers are Audrey 705 00:51:49.435 --> 00:51:52.715 Evans, Georgia Hampton, and the mysterious doctor first name, 706 00:51:52.715 --> 00:51:53.195 last name. 707 00:51:53.195 --> 00:51:56.475 Our senior producer is Hans Buto. Our executive producer is 708 00:51:56.475 --> 00:52:00.090 Jason Oberholzer, and the show's host, that's me, is Mike 709 00:52:00.090 --> 00:52:12.970 Rignetta. Trespasser, a high stone wall. I continue to 710 00:52:11.625 --> 00:52:16.505 obsessively study improving your hurdle technique online. The red 711 00:52:16.505 --> 00:52:19.785 curve of the track guiding from the right to the left of the 712 00:52:19.785 --> 00:52:24.345 image as drills, mini disciplines are suggested over 713 00:52:24.745 --> 00:52:25.385 and over. 714 00:52:26.030 --> 00:52:28.670 I was young when I heard recounted to me the terror and 715 00:52:28.670 --> 00:52:32.350 excitement of being chased off farmland, thinking there was a 716 00:52:32.350 --> 00:52:39.230 gun scaling over to escape with superhuman force. Even then, I 717 00:52:39.230 --> 00:52:47.165 wanted to be part of the chase. Excerpt of The Blank Jumped Over 718 00:52:47.165 --> 00:52:51.405 the Blank Along a Line a Leap a Landing by Rowan Powell. 719 00:52:54.880 --> 00:52:58.000 Neverpost is a production of Charts and Leisure and is 720 00:52:58.000 --> 00:53:00.080 distributed by Radiotopia.