Here’s the blog post from Codeberg regarding their stance on AI/LLM usage:
https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-llms.html

And at the very bottom:

However, we also need to be honest about certain use cases that might no longer be welcome on Codeberg. If you see yourself on this list, you don’t need to move right away, but there might be other places that better fit your needs:

Projects that are created by LLM "agents" in autonomous ways
Projects written and maintained with heavy use of LLMs
Projects where the amount of resources (e.g. storage, CI/CD) is significantly larger than what the involved amount of people could have created by hand
Projects heavily tied to the LLM ecosystem, e.g. LLM-written tools to ease LLM usage
Users sending LLM contributions in violation of project's custom policies

The end goal at the moment is to have the script setup a minimal environment that would host a forum. That way people can organize themselves based on local community needs.

My current and more manageable goal is to create a script to setup a minimal environment for a basic blog. At the very least someone can make posts for their community or themselves. Once I have that baseline, then I’d work towards the larger goal if that’s still how I feel after getting there.

I’m also interested in exploring different ways to be able to share local community servers/sites. It may look ugly, and may add slight inconveniences but it would be nice to have alternatives to big tech offerings. I’m leaning towards a small web concept. A focus on local communities helping themselves and neighbouring communities.

I don’t like bloat or AI/LLMs and I focus more on minimalism to reduce surface attack areas while still focusing on security. There’s nothing flashy about how I plan to approach this project. It’s going to look ugly.

My main focus is to help create communication for local communities and not create tech that enables control over other peoples freedom.

I highly doubt my project will ever leave my community and that’s fine, I’m not interested in making a name in an already crowded space.

I’m currently in the process of writing yet another script. This time my aim is to make one that will setup a server from a fresh Operating System install.

I want to do this for two reasons. The first is so that I have an alternative to backups. It would also help with major Operating System updates because sometimes those are a bit messy.

The second reason is because I want to help other people setup a simple, minimal and more secure setup for a home server as well.

It will all be POSIX portable too so it won’t be limited by extra requirements. I’ve already made a lot of progress with it because I started doing the same with my personal computer. I’ve been able to focus on that because my home server is super simple and I’ve been able to ignore all the recent vulnerabilities.

I think I find it hard to be sympathetic about the user’s blog about getting banned from r/java.

They did something against the rules, intentionally or not, and faced the consequences. Instead of accepting what happened, they went on to completely dismiss hand written code in a few ways and constantly insist AI code is better than hand written code. They also insist AI is an inevitability.

It appears to me that there was no self reflection into understanding why there is harsh criticism about AI/LLM usage. No attempt to understand anything. Just straight to playing the victim and belittling anyone who chooses to write code by hand. I wouldn’t be surprised if this kind of reaction gains a label in the future because this reaction seems to be a trend that happens quite often.

The post also seems to have completely avoided any mention of the environmental devastation caused by using or enabling the usage of AL/LLM’s. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised about that though… Personal convenience, productivity and a sense of self satisfaction is far more important than our silly little spaceship called Earth.

My public facing server uses a wildcard domain cert plus it’s hosted on an uncommon higher port. It only serves static pages. My SSH port is hidden behind a WireGuard connection. I keep it extremely simple because simple is easy to maintain.

I generally have Operating System backups that are stored on the same drive. Those backups are immediately copied to 3 different devices, my computer and two other drives

The backup on the local drive is useful for when I’m tinkering, making adjustments, adding or removing stuff. Restoring from that local backup is far more convenient than using the remote backups

I don’t use anything with a database so all my static media files and wiki’s don’t go to the local backup. I handle them separately but they are still spread across the 3 other devices in my network

I make a partition on my main drive which I load any .iso on to it. Usually I keep a Linux Mint .iso there in case I need a basic set of tools outside of my main Operating System for when I mess up my main OS. I can load that .iso partition at boot through the BIOS menu.

I’m sure you can do the same with an NVME drive. You may need to check the BIOS boot order to make sure you start your preferred OS when booting your system.

Further down this comment chain I explain why I feel AI is causing so many issues.

The blog post linked but the user lepire does an even better job explaining how AI destroys online communities.

Personal convenience should not come at such a deep and destructive cost.

I’ve been on the internet since 1998 and I’ve watched slowly as big money and bigger tech companies slowly destroy everything that made the internet inclusive and weird. I’m sure people who have had access to the Internet for longer than myself would have even more to say about the current state of the internet.

I use Alpine Linux as a daily desktop. I use swaywm and foot, sometimes LibreWolf for browsing. I’m mostly using the command line with some TUI’s so it’s a very minimal system.

I found out I really enjoy POSIX scripting so that’s how I choose to spend my spare time. I try to make scripts that make using the CLI environment easier to use.

If you are interested, I have a script that can setup Alpine on a desktop with full disk encryption. I didn’t figure out how to do it, I just made the script easier to use. https://codeberg.org/taters/Alpine-Linux-Install_Full-Disk-Encryption_LVM

I also use it for two Raspberry Pi devices. I think the minimal environment is good for a server. Less complexity and attack surface to think about.

I’ve learned a lot about computers and the operating system with Alpine, it’s been a fun experience.

It’s completely overwhelming how many new projects there are that are full of AI/LLM code and documentation. AI has also crept into existing projects, including those that deal with security or encryption. It’s even in Linux now. This is all incredibly troubling from an outside perspective.

It’s dangerous to live on top of so many layers of abstraction. If we don’t understand our tools and machinery, they will not be useful to us when they eventually break. And all things eventually break. Just because it exists and is available, does not mean it is good, acceptable or safe to use.

It’s very saddening that the ethical issues about the use of AI is constantly being pushed to the side of every conversation. It’s frustrating to deal with people who are Pro-AI that are consistently rude and condescending. It’s frustrating for Pro-AI people to consistently ignore a person’s question to aggressively push more AI products on other people. This behaviour has killed any sense or feeling of community.

This technology didn’t always exist. This technology doesn’t need to have such complete control over our future. It is completely acceptable for people to seek AI free alternatives and not be treat like they are troublesome idiots.

All the rage and insecurities in the world won’t erase people’s desire to feel community and express their humanity. It’s a shame that the few who are angry and insecure are also incredibly fucking loud.

I’ve lost all motivation to continue any sort of self-hosting. AI/LLM has crept into every corner of the internet. It’s killed the community vibe I once grew up with. There’s a certain lifelessness with these projects and the internet as a whole that’s hard to describe but it’s just not fun anymore.

I’m in the progress of changing my hobby to be more offline. Writing my own code for my own purpose and entertainment. I’ll still host my code on Codeberg. Codeberg, this Lemmy account and that one bash focused discord server will be my entire online presence going forward. Whatever happens, happens and I won’t feel a loss about losing access to any of those things.

Capitalism and the forces that promote or enable capitalism just exploits everything until there is no life, fun or joy left…

I use Alpine Linux so yeah, I am using something by Linux

It’s not ideal but I don’t have the time to find alternatives for everything all at once, just one thing at a time which is the pace I am going. I’ll deal with it when the time comes but it’s in the back of my mind

I don’t expect perfection out of anyone. I would not make friends if I held them to such high standards or expectations. Everyone learns, adapts and grows at their own pace and I would do better to support them along the way through their journey

Myself and the people around me are doing our best in this situation we are in with the tools that are currently available to us

I don’t believe trying to reduce the complex human experience to 100% right or 100% wrong will lead to any useful discussion when there’s so much in the middle we could be discussing

That’s true, it CertBot seems to be quite mature

It was a bit overwhelming for me when I first started into self hosting, there were a lot of concepts that I had to wrap my head around first before I could look into using CertBot itself

Awesome, thanks so much, this is a big head start for me

I have a good idea how I want to organize things now

I definitely expect this path to be a bit of a challenge

I was looking at lighttpd as well. That was the only one on the list that sounded familiar to me. I may check it out and see if it can fit me needs. I do run a very minimal setup so I might just be enough.

I also make use of Caddy’s built in file server to serve static pages so this is good to know about HAProxy

Thank you, I’ll have a look at lego-acme, it looks interestingly. I prefer to use cron so this is could be something I would consider using.

This is great, thank you for taking the time for this write up :) The provided scripts are a huge help to me

So far my only question I have is about the directories you use. I was wondering if you could provide the directories you use or even just an example so I could better understand the file tree. I’m very particular with my files and have a whole system dedicated to maintaining neat and organized files

I agree about not using /etc for server related stuff. I keep all my server/container related stuff in /srv so it’s easier for me to manage