zlacker

There's something ironic about using Claud Code – a closed source service, that you can't self-host the hardware for, and that you can't get access to the data for – to self-host so that you can reduce your dependencies on things.

>>danpal+(OP)
Before you had to rely on blog posts and reddit for information, something you also couldn't self host. And if you are just asking it questions and taking actions yourself, you are learning how it works to do it yourself next time.

>>Schema+Ha
Or you could read man pages, ask people for help, read books... all of which are more closely aligned with self-hosting than outsourcing the whole process.

I agree you could use LLMs to learn how it works, but given that they explain and do the actions, I suspect the vast majority aren't learning anything. I've helped students who are learning to code, and very often they just copy/paste back and forth and ignore the actual content.

>>danpal+Jc
Sure, you could. But this isn't my job, it isn't my career. I just want Nextcloud running on a machine at home. I know linux and docker well enough to validate the ideas coming out of Gemini, and it helps me find stuff much faster than if I had to read man pages or read books.

And I find the stuff that the average self hoster needs is so surface level that LLMs flawlessly provide solutions.

>>Schema+ld
My push back isn't really on the possibility, it's on the irony. Self hosting is for many an ideological act that's about reducing dependencies on big tech, removing surveillance, etc. LLMs are essentially the antithesis of this.

If you're self hosting for other reasons then that's fine. I self host media for various reasons, but I also give all my email/calendar/docs/photos over to a big tech company because I'm not motivated by that aspect.

>>danpal+(OP)
If I google how to host a Wordpress blog are you going to tell me what I am doing is "ironic" because Google is not hosted by me? Even more ironic, Google has a competing product, blogspot! How ironic!

>>danpal+7g
Kind of but I don't really agree. Before LLMs you were still reliant on online resources, forums, digitalocean blog posts. The server itself also doesn't rely on an LLM. If one goes down, your server will continue functioning. You are also not tied to any particular LLM and can freely switch.

They also aren't seeing any of your sensitive data being hosted on the server. At least the way I use them is getting suggestions for what software and configs I should go with, and then I do the actual doing. Which means I'm becoming independently more capable than I was before.

>>danpal+(OP)
Ahh yes, the irony is not lost on using a paid closed-source service to create and help manage a self-hosted service running FOSS. I thought it was because I didn't want to pay SAAS subscription costs, but now I just need Claude Pro...

I'm asking Claude technical questions about setup, e.g., read this manual, that I have skimmed but don't necessarily fully understand yet. How do I monitor this service? Oh connect Tailscale and manage with ACLs. But what do I do when it doesn't work or goes down? Ask Claude.

To get more accurate setup and diagnostics, I need to share config files, firewall rules, IPv6 GUAs, Tailscale ACLs... and Claude just eats it up, and now Anthropic knows it forever too. Sure, CGNET, Wireguard, and ssh logins stand between us, but... Claude is running a terminal window on a LAN device next to another terminal window that does have access to my server. Do I trust VS Code? Anthropic? The FOSS? Is this really self-hosting? Ahh, but I am learning stuff, right?

>>danpal+(OP)
There is, but if I have to chose between tolerating the irony, and waiting for the hardware/model performance situation to improve before getting started, I'll ironically mark self-hosting a claude-equivalent as a TODO and get started on the other stuff now.

>>danpal+Jc
That would be ideal, but there are software engineers who use Tailscale, so I think our expectations are too high.