The Beauty of Digital Hoarding and Self-Hosted Solutions
There’s something beautifully ironic about stumbling across a newsletter dedicated to self-hosted software updates. While the rest of the world seems obsessed with cramming everything into the cloud and paying monthly subscriptions for the privilege, there’s this thriving community of digital tinkerers who’ve decided to take matters into their own hands.
The Self-Host Weekly newsletter caught my attention this week, particularly because of the delicious contradiction in the comments section. Someone was apparently complaining about too many project updates in a newsletter literally designed to showcase… project updates. It’s like complaining that a coffee shop has too many coffee options – mate, that’s literally why we’re here.
What really struck me was one user’s confession: “I don’t always know I have a problem to solve until I find the solution (another container for the hoard).” This perfectly captures the self-hosting mindset. We’re digital collectors, spinning up containers and services not because we desperately need them, but because they exist and we might need them someday. It’s hoarding, but with a technological twist that somehow makes it feel productive rather than problematic.
The discussion around rwMarkable, a self-hosted to-do app, highlighted something that frustrates me about modern software development. One user detailed their nightmare experience trying to reorganise items in Vikunja – clicking through individual items, five actions per move, turning what should be a simple drag-and-drop operation into a soul-crushing exercise in clicking futility. When basic reorganisation takes “100 actions just to move 20 items,” you know the UX designer has lost the plot entirely.
This is exactly why the self-hosting movement matters. When commercial software prioritises flashy features over basic usability, when companies treat users as data points rather than humans with actual workflows, the open-source community steps in. Sure, self-hosted solutions might lack the polish of commercial alternatives, but they’re built by people who actually use the bloody things.
Living in Melbourne’s tech scene, I’ve watched countless startups pivot towards SaaS models, convinced that everything needs to live in someone else’s cloud. There’s definitely convenience in that approach – I’ll admit my iPhone and MacBook are hardly bastions of self-reliance. But there’s also something deeply satisfying about running your own services, knowing exactly where your data lives and who has access to it.
The environmental implications weigh on me too. Every self-hosted solution running on efficient hardware is one less service consuming resources in massive data centres. When we’re worried about AI’s carbon footprint, maybe the solution isn’t just better algorithms – maybe it’s bringing computing back home, running only what we actually need.
The community’s playful side shines through in suggestions for “Open-Source.LOL” – a showcase for wonderfully useless projects like a JavaScript library that determines if a number is thirteen, or TypeScript types that implement WebAssembly. These projects serve no practical purpose, but they represent pure joy in creation. In a world increasingly dominated by metrics and productivity, there’s something refreshing about code written simply because someone thought it would be fun.
Self-hosting isn’t for everyone. It requires time, patience, and a willingness to troubleshoot when things inevitably break at 2 AM. But for those of us who enjoy tinkering, who value data sovereignty, and who get a small thrill from spinning up yet another container we’ll probably never use, it’s a reminder that we don’t have to accept the default options. Sometimes the best solution is the one you build yourself, even if it’s just another addition to your digital hoard.
The tech world needs more newsletters like Self-Host Weekly, celebrating the builders and tinkerers who refuse to accept that everything must live in someone else’s cloud. Long may they continue adding to our collective container collections.