Windows is not a general purpose operating system. It's a platform for monetizing businesses via licensing and cloud services, and a platform for monetizing private users by way of advertising and data mining.
If they were ever to produce a Windows PowerUser edition, with absolutely no bloat, it would have to be priced like a CAD suite.
My problem with Microsoft is that they won't sell an un-enshittified version of Windows for any price (LTSC notwithstanding; it's not licensable for general use.) Owning our computing experience is that important to them.
"AI" is not a machine for improving the lives of people, it's a tool for consolidating power and wealth at the top. Declining welfare and access to basic human needs shows that decision makers are getting better at min/maxing the economy.
And it's cheap! If you want JUST cameras it's pennies a day, I'm running a 2010 gaming PC with a dozen services (which would cost >200 bucks from the usual suspects) and it's still only 20 bucks a month.
He never mentioned if the screens in every house had a monthly fee or if you could pay more to skip adds. We could still be right on track to war with East Asia.
Apple at least claims to not have keys for their E2EE, such as when you turn on Advanced Protection (or whatever it’s called) it has this whole spiel about how screwed you are if you lose your recovery ability
One of the many reasons to host your own stuff. It costs about 0.75CAD per day to run my server and PoE switch. For my 20 bucks a month I get cameras, a media server, password manager, push notifications, file sharing, and a dozen other services, all without handing my data over to business or governments.
Is it as secure as a cloud service? Depends on what you consider secure. I closely monitor access logs and use strong passwords, Amazon has billions to spend on encryption, apps, and datacenters but they also have thousands of employees that can access your data at any time for any reason.
I would love it if some commercial host-it-yourself product were released but that goes against the pay to play model that has been chosen for all modern tech.
> In 2023, the FTC ordered the company to pay $5.8 million over claims that employees and contractors had unrestricted access to customers’ videos for years.
Firstly, I doubt that this behavior was not against policy, meaning that employees were not able to do so, but did so anyways. Secondly, the article didn't include they were ordered to create a "comprehensive privacy and data security program" which would lockdown such access further.
Im running Zoneminder for cameras, Jellyfin, Audiobookshelf and lightmusicserver for media, keepass + webdav for a pw manager, file browser for fast file sharing. Takes a week to setup from scratch but from there on it's like 10min of maintenance a week.
I fear ISPs have made a commercial host-it-yourself product near impossible. Imagine selling a product, getting no ongoing revenue, and then being on the hook - forever - to support average people trying to connect to something inside their home network from their phone. Nightmare material.
If anyone is having trouble understanding the support load, start by traveling to your local assisted living home and explaining to everyone static vs. dynamic IP address assignment.
You can do it fairly easily by bouncing off a server you control... aaaand we're right back where we started.
I think something like Tailscale's technology could resolve this and many other self hosting access cases. Already, I don't open any ports - just use Tailscale to connect to my PC at home. If this was integrated into the "camera app", it could be seamless - only authentication required. Since the traffic goes directly point to point, the cost of hosting this service isn't too large either.
Tailscale solves the access/NAT issue and keeps your services off of your WAN, but it relies on a 3rd party to let you use your own equipment. I understand why it is useful and a necessary service but I'll never touch it.
There’s a bunch of ways to achieve a similar goal. Especially if the scenario is you and your family to home or a server.
I use it with a few friends and we do stuff like host backups for each other. It makes it easy to securely allow that one server to be available to my hosts.
What worries me is how the HN groupthink mentions it at every possibility.
If people on HN aren't capable/willing to run their own kit there's no hope.
In the slashdot days you'd never get such worship of tailscale and cloudflare. Even in the early days of HN you'd have people suggesting a bit of rsync rather than using dropbox.
It's everywhere, reddit and the fediverse also seem to have drank the cloudflare coolaid. Someone's been pushing the idea that it's impossible to host on 80/443 safely, only big brother can keep you safe.
I understand why it's not feasible. I admin a server at home and one for a small business, and most people do not really understand "why doesn't it just work like a normal app." For the foreseeable future self hosting is an ideological choice rather than one of practicality :/
If they were ever to produce a Windows PowerUser edition, with absolutely no bloat, it would have to be priced like a CAD suite.