Physical dependency is different than logical.

With my computer, I’m dependent on my supplier for the tools. There’s usually a reasonable market serving a variety of tools. With a storage service provider, I’m dependent on their rules, and there’s high friction (migration) to escape from those rules.

I can change a colo location in minutes if it’s virtual or a couple of days if it’s a rack of equipment. I can change my transit provider too. Supermicro seem to have supply problems right now, but dell don’t.

If you tie yourself into amazon specific tooling you are dependent on one company.

That's like saying when you grow your own tomatoes you're dependent on the weather or your capability to deal with said weather. That is true. But it misses the point. When you grow your own tomatoes and the store sells only a certain bad tasting kind, suddenly wants to increase the price by factor 10 or stops selling tomatoes at all, then the value of growing it yourself shows. And they are dependent on the weather just like you.

If you self host, you're dependent on things sure. But the point isn't to reach some hypothetical perfect state of independence, the point is to get the flavour you want, not have to deal with them changing their business model, and so on.

The reason I self host my webservers is because my webhoster decided to charge a premium for SSL certs. So much in fact that for the cost of one cert per month I could run a webserver for a year.

Then I had my mailservers noster taking decisions I didn't like, so again I went and self hosted.

Some of those things are running for a decade now and I have yet to experience the catastrophic events you mention. Sure you need to do your due diligence and know your craft, but at least I am ot affected by someone changing their business model or deciding it isn't profitable anymore.

Not sure what your point is. The ability to manufacture silicon chips will only ever be in the hands of a relatively small group of people worldwide. So of course all of us are dependent on these people/businesses to do any form of modern computing.

The question isn't how can we live without dependencies. It's how many dependencies must we have? And of those that aren't strictly necessary, what are the benefits (and costs) of breaking them?

You grow the chicken feed nearby on your farm and you create materials by hand

I mean sure there are a lot of Instagram homesteaders that are obviously cosplaying but you are making the comment like you've never known anybody that lives in the deep backwoods, I mean, just spend a few years living in deep Appalachia and you'll see what I mean.

Folks don't have the same style of living you have in mind but they are probably closer to subsistence farming than you'd give them credit for. Now, these people will buy tools at Walmart, because they are just surviving and not cosplaying, but they'd also get by if Walmart disappeared. They're a lot less dependent than I am.

I don't know anyone who thinks chickens are the path to complete freedom from society. I do know many who feel that chickens and other such measures provide a level of independence from societal structures they wish not to associate with or do not trust.

Having your own infra is similar. You still need electricity, replacement components and perhaps friends with similar ideas that you can trade information/services with over packet radio links but it is certainly better than whoops, no internet for a few days, nothing works, touch grass.

It also is a nice backup in case anyone starts actively censoring (versus the passive self-censoring created by tempting people into walled gardens) the internet where I live. Being able to shitpost over encrypted packet radio and exchange files/news is certainly better than radio silence and state media.

Until you understand how 1984 extrapolates with today's technologies - and the only defense against corrupt-captured state(s) and industrial complexes toeing the establishment line, in ever increasing consolidation of so-called power-control, is decentralized-distributed tech - and then where the centralization [especially physical infrastructure] becomes their major weakness; yes, there is the control of means of production-funnel of resources-energy issue but if shit really hits the fan than guerilla tactics appear to always reign supreme, whereby major supply lines, energy production, an CPU architecture will be first to be targeted.

The bad actors through subversion are currently attempting their best to not cause panic for the herds to react more strongly and more quickly than their apparatus they're currently ready to handle [at least that they believe they're ready to handle] - however things can fall apart very quickly, the Berlin wall fell much sooner than practically all predicted.

We had timesharing on mainframes. Everything old is new again.

It's right for business (partially - how are the business employees managing AWS?), wrong for personal use.

Nobody's renting their phone on a task-by-task basis, they're staring at a personal computer for hours a day in their leisure time by choice.

That's how computers were before the rise of personal computers

> each of us should self-host their stuff when we could perfectly well just share one machine?

Actually yes. The golden rule of selfhosting is that you don't host for others. Then you are just hosting, with all the annoyance that comes with it. Also I might have different needs than my siblings, different software, settings and so on. Extreme example: police warrant for a sibling, and they take the family server away? Who is legally responsible for what is hosted there? Families could share a single car, or a single bathroom, realistically multiple families even - yet anyone who can afford it will opt to avoid that.

So along with sovereignty I will always opt for the most independence and freedom. The only reason people think otherwise is because because of alleged technical infeasibility.

I would hesitate before entrusting that kind of hardware to an AI agent. It is an interesting idea, but what if it decides full format is necessary? In my personal anecdata of where AI went wrong, at least I was the human in the middle to stop the bad decision. At best, you end up with a Simpson level nuclear plant terminal, where Homer is just trained to press Y each time it sees a prompt.

I guess what I am saying is: some LLM integration may be worthwhile.

Separately, on a more serious note, what makes this offer that different from its competition?