foggy

I’m gonna speak generally and it doesn’t quite generalize. Sue me.

Formal education in computer science is a waste, unless you want to be in academia. A formal education in computer science will either prepare you for higher education in Computer Sciences, or it will drill into you some best practices on how to be a good programmer. You can get the latter through brute force for free.

That said, I have a formal CS education. It has helped my career 0. I’m 10 years into my career and am the 1 man cybersecurity team (plus my boss and my coworker who does most of our networking stuff unless he’s too busy, then that’s me as well) for a fleet of ~4000 devices across ~1500 folks.

I have never once needed to explain to someone what von Neumann architecture is, and how it differs from Harvard. I have never once needed to explain two’s compliment or how to represent negative numbers in bunary. Knowing what an xor swap is and why it’s used has only helped me solve a leetcode problem exactly ONE TIME. I have explained to many people what P vs NP is (no your suno track will not be the next cultural phenomenon) but nobody cares.

The stuff that did serve me was like, making the card game of war in Java. Even the GUI. That’s a project I would have never done because who TF would. But it forces you to implement recursion (war within a war), it entails some good validation checking practices, etc. the truth is though, I did not need a college education for that project.

At the end of the day, technical projects teach technical skills. Not PowerPoints based on textbooks.

If you wanna learn how to harden your servers, I recommend freemium hands on learning platforms like tryhackme of hackthebox.

Hack the box has a module on server hardening. It’s my go to for hardening servers.

Not very common…?

Meta is a word.

Lol idk why you’re asking me!

Use whatever services make sense for your situation! 😊

Right. And not does Jason have enough info on OP.

So it comes across, as I said, as a “gatekeeper-ass” thing to say in the context of OPs journey to self hosting.

Where they are is in no way “sad”. Except if you’re being an adversarial gatekeeper dick about purity.

I think your life is sad.

Let me know how you took that.

I’m not out here to Stan for cloudflare. It’s just a totally valid tool for the job, there are valid reasons to use it, and as we agree, it’s not productive to tell a newcomer that their choice of meeting their needs is “sad”

In fact, it’s an unwelcoming thing to say. If we want folks to stop using cloud services, we can’t shame the valid paths to get there.

this is sad

I think you missed my point. You are mistaking your preferred architecture with moral superiority.

Cloudflare is not “gatekeeping” someone from self-hosting. It is an optional tool. A person choosing to use it because they are new, budget-conscious, or not ready to expose services directly is not sad, fake self-hosting, or somehow philosophically impure.

You can absolutely argue that Cloudflare has tradeoffs. That is fair. It adds dependency, abstraction, and vendor-specific knowledge. It is not magic security dust. No disagreement there.

But telling a beginner “this is sad” because they are using a mainstream protective layer while learning is exactly the kind of gatekeeping that makes self-hosting communities hostile to newcomers.

Also, “just use a VPN” is not a universal answer. VPNs are great for private admin access. They are not always the right solution when someone wants family members to access media or services without managing VPN clients, device support, troubleshooting, and onboarding. Different threat models, different usability needs.

The helpful response would have been: “Cloudflare can be useful, but understand what it does and does not protect you from. Don’t expose admin panels. Use MFA, strong auth, least privilege, good backups, updates, reverse proxy rules, and keep anything sensitive behind a VPN.”

That is useful advice.

“This is sad” is just self-hosting purity signaling.

I have tagged you as “selfhosting gatekeeper” for future reference.

There’s plenty wrong with shaming people en route to that path for not being 100% there.

That is all I said.

That’s a gatekeeper-ass take. It is t sad in any way shape or form. What an elitist proclamation.

If you build your own infra internally and want a billion dollar industry to be your point of entry because you’re not confident in hardening a vps or don’t wanna pay for that on top of everything else (yet), so the fuck what?

REEEE YOU MUST OWN ALL OF YOUR INFRA

🙄

Get bent. If cloudflare goes down again (for another whole handful of minutes, the horror!!) they are clearly ramping to make the jump to a VPS when the finances and/or cybersecurity chops feel ready. “Sad”? Please. Get off your high horse.

Every AI logo is a butthole.

Do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?

The whole anti Google holier than thou is annoying at these levels.

Ok fine, don’t use Google. But telling your friends and loved ones to switch email providers over your crusade is worse than vegans telling you about their diet.

I’m all for kicking Google to the curb. I’m not for shoving my beliefs down other people’s throats.

Im not saying Zuck is good or a savior of choice, but now would be a good time for facebook investors to pressure him to eat that difference.

Not that he should, but hes all in on Open Source*

*Massive stipulations apply.

🖕 my home server disagrees 🏴‍☠️