The Internet takes another step towards oblivion.
Posted: Mon Sep 05, 2022 5:36 am
As some of you may be aware, I host a server. This server is supah sekrit and autistic, just like me. However, it has no domain, so when I get a power outage, the IP will change, and when that happens, everything falls apart because no one knows how to reach it. In order to get the new IP out to people, I have to use third parties to spread the link.
Now, at this point, clever, internet savvy people will be all like "just get a domain, dummy". Yeah, good idea. Maybe even get a DDNS service so that we can have rapid propagation of the new IP so that we're not seeing multi-day downtimes because places fail to update the change of IP in a reasonable timespan. Cool. Except... What happens when all these third parties end up saying you don't deserve to exist and have a presence online?
"That's silly, Mr. Swede! Nobody gives a fuck about your tiny secret home server!" Well, in the current state of the Internet, one extremely loud butthurt person is all it took to take down some tiny, insignificant southern hemisphere bird enthusiast forum off of cuckflare, whose track record has reached the holy magical number of THREE sites knocked off of their services for political reasons, with their earlier takedowns consisting of some random hipster blogging site, and some chinese girl cartoon enthusiast site. My point is, if this can be caused by a single person, then this sets a precedent where others will come to these hosting companies, domain name registrars, anti-ddos service providers, etc, butthurt in hand, demanding gentle rubs of their hurt rearsores. Previously there at least had to be massive organizations involved in getting these minor sites knocked off, but that no longer seems to be the case after the last couple of days.
In these times, getting into the domain game for my server right at the tail end of its ability to successfully do its job seems... too late? I mean, even if there's very little genuine worry that what I host will ever even be seen by the kinds of people who'd create a shitstorm, that's just judging the risks based on the current state of things, and not what the future might bring.
I'll keep my server up for as long as I am able to, and I might get a domain some time later this month to make things easier to where people can just bookmark that instead of having to wrestle with this IP changing bullshit on their end, but there's really no telling how long us plebs with inadequate social credit scores are allowed to do stuff like owning domains. The idea of "if you put it on the internet, it's out there forever" is a very misunderstood concept. It just means that anyone, at any point, might archive what you say and save it for future use against you, not that what you put up somewhere will remain online forever. In the end, preserving shit you care about means archiving it yourself. Relying on others will get you burned sooner or later, even if you're paying them for their services.
I would give you the advice to start archiving anything you actually care about locally. Set up both an active copy and an offline copy in something like an external enclosure. 4TB CMR HDD's go for like 120bux atm, with 12-16TB ones costing below 300bux per piece. That's the price we pay because everyone wants to sanitize the internet.
Now, at this point, clever, internet savvy people will be all like "just get a domain, dummy". Yeah, good idea. Maybe even get a DDNS service so that we can have rapid propagation of the new IP so that we're not seeing multi-day downtimes because places fail to update the change of IP in a reasonable timespan. Cool. Except... What happens when all these third parties end up saying you don't deserve to exist and have a presence online?
"That's silly, Mr. Swede! Nobody gives a fuck about your tiny secret home server!" Well, in the current state of the Internet, one extremely loud butthurt person is all it took to take down some tiny, insignificant southern hemisphere bird enthusiast forum off of cuckflare, whose track record has reached the holy magical number of THREE sites knocked off of their services for political reasons, with their earlier takedowns consisting of some random hipster blogging site, and some chinese girl cartoon enthusiast site. My point is, if this can be caused by a single person, then this sets a precedent where others will come to these hosting companies, domain name registrars, anti-ddos service providers, etc, butthurt in hand, demanding gentle rubs of their hurt rearsores. Previously there at least had to be massive organizations involved in getting these minor sites knocked off, but that no longer seems to be the case after the last couple of days.
In these times, getting into the domain game for my server right at the tail end of its ability to successfully do its job seems... too late? I mean, even if there's very little genuine worry that what I host will ever even be seen by the kinds of people who'd create a shitstorm, that's just judging the risks based on the current state of things, and not what the future might bring.
I'll keep my server up for as long as I am able to, and I might get a domain some time later this month to make things easier to where people can just bookmark that instead of having to wrestle with this IP changing bullshit on their end, but there's really no telling how long us plebs with inadequate social credit scores are allowed to do stuff like owning domains. The idea of "if you put it on the internet, it's out there forever" is a very misunderstood concept. It just means that anyone, at any point, might archive what you say and save it for future use against you, not that what you put up somewhere will remain online forever. In the end, preserving shit you care about means archiving it yourself. Relying on others will get you burned sooner or later, even if you're paying them for their services.
I would give you the advice to start archiving anything you actually care about locally. Set up both an active copy and an offline copy in something like an external enclosure. 4TB CMR HDD's go for like 120bux atm, with 12-16TB ones costing below 300bux per piece. That's the price we pay because everyone wants to sanitize the internet.