Local First
Posts tagged “Local First”.
- Why I Self-Host
The reasons I give — privacy, cost, resilience — are all true, and all partly a cover story. I set out to build a little local-AI appliance and spent the night fighting NVIDIA drivers and firewall lockouts instead, and enjoyed it. That last part is the actual reason, and it isn't a recommendation.
- They Took the Jack
The headphone jack was the most universal, highest-fidelity, zero-configuration audio interface ever shipped — and it left the phone because most people didn't miss it. That 'most people didn't' is the whole story. It isn't a conspiracy; it's what designing for the average does to the edges.
- Everything With a Battery Cooks in a Parked Car
I wanted parking-mode recording without wiring into the starter battery, in a car that bakes every summer and freezes every winter. Those two rules ruled out almost the entire off-the-shelf market and left me building a battery-less 4G dongle — and learning why truckers don't trust fuses.
- The Missing Middle in Data Tooling
Enterprise platforms on one end, a pile of interchangeable SQL boxes on the other. The useful middle is mostly empty — and not because it is hard to build.
- I Have Four Edit Histories for the Same Photo
Non-destructive photo editing keeps the original untouched and logs your edits separately — event sourcing, basically, for pictures. It's a promise about the original file. It says nothing about whether you can still read the log in ten years.