You lost me the second I saw crypto shit.
this post was submitted on 05 May 2024
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What the hell is this? Half way down the page it becomes a crypto advert...
without trusting anyone.
Well, except of course the entity that gave you the hardware. And the entity that preinstalled and/or gave you the OS image. And that that entity wasn't fooled into including malicious code in some roundabout way.
like it or not, there's currently no real way to use any significant amount of computing power without trusting someone. And usually several hundreds/thousands of someones.
The best you can hope for is to focus the trust into a small number of entities that have it in their own self interest to prove worthy of that trust.
Well said. Solid facts.
How's it standing out? What's the benefit over other self-hosting distros like YunoHost, Cosmos, Cloudron etc? Except the added Bitcoin?
"Sovereignty", that big white whale of the dysfunctional far right?
Sry, I don't get at all what you're trying to say...
It's been a buzzword among the ultra-libertarian, anti-government, tinfoil hat wearing set for decades.
And how do ultra-libertarians tie into the topic of hosting open source services?
The title literally says "Sovereign computing". Are you okay? I do recommend reading from the top down, for more information please re-read.
Oh wow, thx. No. I'm just clueless. And there is a cultural difference, so souvereign citizens aren't the first thing that comes to my mind when reading that word... But thanks for explaining the joke to me, anyways 😅
Okay, sorry for the sarcasm. I think there is a certain overlap in the language used around general privacy principles and the more... out there, political anti-society movements.
Sometimes it's innocent and random but when I see somebody putting cryptocurrency up front in their project and using "sovereign computing" as a tagline, my internal crackpot detector goes nuts. I'm fairly sure that deep down these people would want to see the world burn to stay warm toward the end.
Hehehe. Yeah they put everything in on their site. From a canary to their company ethics, to an origin story, all necessary buzzwords, job offers (which they have none), a marketplace ... Lot's of flowery words. And honestly, it doesn't even smell like AI generated text. They've probably mastered the bullshit bingo and decided to go all in. I kinda like it (in a twisted way.)
Nobody can stop you from spending your money as you see fit, 24/7/365, from anywhere, to anywhere, instantly, and for free.
N—... Nobody is doing that now, with regular money, either. Why would anyone want to stop me from spending my money? Apart from maybe my wife...
Nobody is doing that now, with regular money, either.
I think it's more for ACH between banks as well as some banks have limits. Also, a government literally stepped in to actively block people's accounts. Just because you can swipe your card and buy a soda, doesn't mean there aren't restrictions or people being blocked.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said Thursday financial institutions have moved quickly to freeze the accounts of people linked to the demonstrations in Ottawa, leaving an unknown number of protesters in financial limbo
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ottawa-protests-frozen-bank-accounts-1.6355396
Well that's scary. Luckily I live nowhere near that part of the world.
But even if I have a server, I'll have to have my own separate Internet if I really want to be able to pay unrestrictedly. Otherwise the government would just shut down my internet connection, right?
But even if I have a server, I'll have to have my own separate Internet if I really want to be able to pay unrestrictedly.
Separate Internet? I mean, yes, you do need Internet. Not sure what you mean by "separate." And you don't need a server (node), though they are handy for privacy. You could choose one that is reputable.
Otherwise the government would just shut down my internet connection, right?
If they knew where it/your Internet was. All you really need is your phone or PC. You could use a cafe or library or cell tower or etc.
What I mean by separate Internet is a connection to other computers so I can make payments, where said connection isn't able to be controlled by the government.
Yes, you need an Internet connection at some point. This can be a cafe, a library, an office, your house, friend's house, etc. As for controlled by the government, well, that depends on your country.
Worst case, if possible, you can move countries. I understand that might not be feasible, but my point is, you can move countries to escape the government and Internet restrictions. But the government locks your account/bank? Moving countries doesn't fix that, and you're locked out of any money you had there.
I really like the idea of user-friendly selfhosting (which is essentially what this company is offering, I mean hell, I've had similar business ideas floating around in my head too) BUT any company that has:
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an in-the-know marketing team
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Any employees that are somewhat technical enough (which should be guaranteed for a company with this sort of product
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NOT a scam
Would know what a HUGE risk reputation-wise it is to showcase crypto-related selfhosting on the FRONT page. It's like a "build-a-red-flag" or "destroy-our-reputation" speedrun. Even IF you want to offer this, anyone in-the-know with at least 3 braincells would bury this deep in the page and make it difficult to find (if they were well-intentioned in the first place) because at this point anything crypto, especially being the main offering, is a huge red flag.
If instead, they offered a nextcloud instance, for example, or Pihole as an adblocker, or some other good and common services, maybe a selfhosted VPN (or maybe not, because of the stupid and misleading ads of VPN companies), they would be seen as 100% more legit.
Edit: Just checked their marketplace and they have:
Jellyfin
Vaultwarden
FreeGPT-2
Gitea
Matrix
Nextcloud
Their own service for TOR pages
Ghost (a blogging platform)
SearxNG (a search engine)
I mean, add Wordpress, Pihole and some other friendly services, and advertise THOSE!!! Build your own Google (SearxNG)! Build your own MS Office online and OneDrive (Nextcloud)! Build your own Github (Gitea)! Build your own Discord (Matrix)! Build your own password manager (Vaultwarden)! Build your own Netflix (Jellyfin)!
True. Tipi, Umbrel and CasaOS are savvy enough to do this. But do you really want to teach more cryptobros to slip their message under the threshold? I'm fine that they show their true goals front and centre, it's like a note saying "hit me" taped to their backs.
Fair point. But even if they were legit in any way, I'm already positioned not to trust them.
Like to tinker? DIY your server.
Yeah I love doing it myself my server.
This looks real stupid.
On the contrary, it (the website) looks really nice.
The product, on the other hand, seems targeted towards "normies" and would probably do better in a place that doesn't have ppl already self hosting their stuff.
Thats true. Website is immaculate. But its some kinda crypto scam by the looks of it.
BECOME BITCOIN BECOME LIGHTNING
LOL, not in a million years. Dumping this like the cryptocurrency infected garbage it is.
Nobody can stop you from spending your money as you see fit, 24/7/365, from anywhere, to anywhere, instantly, and for free.
Except it's not.
I mean, that quote is truer for any regular currency than it is for shitcoin. The only unique thing about cryptocurrency (and especially POW ones) is that it's flushing the environment down the drain even quicker than bog standard hypercapitalism. And still you can't use your fucking monopoly money to buy a bottled water.
Not "especially", but "specifically" POW. I don't agree about their worthlessness, but even if I did, it's POW that's shitting on the environment, not other systems.
You say that with such certainty, as if proof of stake schemes won't simply be a greenwashing alibi for accelerating validation of currencies using them, to the point of the same carbon footprint as POW.
You're simply wrong to say that POS is without environmental impact, even Ethereum's carbon reductions were only that (and not nearly as high as they claimed).
I do say that with certainty. And I didn't claim that proof of stake has no environmental impact - it just doesn't have more impact than, for example, a web server.
If I start a carbon-neutral wing of an oil company, of course it doesn't make an oil company carbon-neutral. However, that doesn't impact the real value of other companies that actually are carbon neutral.
Similarly, Ethereum is, by far, not a "green" tech, and their usage of proof of stake can easily and reasonably be called greenwashing if they don't also severely limit the usage of POW.
Proof of Stake, though, is not a power-hungry tech, period. And it is a means for crypto to become, overall, a nominal energy user. There are other chains out there (cardano, algorand, nano, and many others) that don't use PoW and that use reasonable amounts of energy.
I appreciate your passion for the environment. But misrepresentation does not help your case, though misrepresentation may help those your fight.
Looks nice, will wait to see how it takes off
Packaging a service for StartOS is a challenging, exciting, creative, and rewarding experience.
Yeah no thanks I'll just run it on Ubuntu or Arch Linux then, where a package is already available.