That's the thing I really can't wrap my mind around with these kind of solutions: how can they be advocated while not offering a good way to be reliable? That's doing a disservice to the other good parts like the better privacy.
If you "plug and forget" from a paid centralized service not using IPFS you have even less recourse.
With IPFS it doesn't matter whether the blocks are locally on your system or in a paid cloud, the blocks are readily available because they are transparently available from BOTH.
If you stop paying the cloud the blocks are still available but slower if they are on a slower pipe.
And IPFS does not work (or at least, has no guarantee) in the event of a file has no hosts. So the only way you could host it yourself safely would be to use something like P2P and distribute the files. Either at large scale (like FileCoin proposes), or by having something like RaspPi's in 2 family members closets so you have redundancy in your hosting - should your house burn down.
Since I was using IPFS that wasn't a problem, since I also had a few other machines hosting the same blocks from different places (including one in a different country).
I love IPFS, but it still needs a live server to pin a resource. Luckily you can host IPFS stuff (theoretically) on a tiny box because any amount of traffic becomes "instantly" distributed. But, still having it hosted is the only way to guarantee your content is actually available.
Did you miss the last part where I said multiple machines are hosting it?
When you mentioned other machines, I assumed you meant that other machines had accessed the content and effectively temporarily seed it, as is the way IPFS works.
If your point was truly that other machines have your content pinned, then what is your point about "hosting it on your laptop"? Seems a bizarre description if your laptop can be closed, but the other machines have the content actually pinned. It's hosted by the other machines, not your laptop.
As long as you follow that rule you don’t lose data.
Also, not all content I keep is the same, I think it could be be tiered. There is a lot of content I have which is third party and easily replaced, these are files that hash to values that other people will also happen to have.
Then there is content I personally created like photos and video which is voluminous and important but not an epic disaster if some of it is lost. Finally there are crucial documents which are truly mission critical, but these make up the smallest share (less than perhaps .1%) by volume.
Every friend I connect with I wouldn’t think twice about giving them some amount of space on my server. I mean, you’re allocating space for chat and metadata and such, why not also a baseline amount of per-peer storage like 100MB. Then you could slide it up from there.
Making this automatic, and on by default at a baseline, adds a level of resiliency to the whole network.
I assume my friends can act as relays (store-and-forward) for anything I’m sending or sharing through the network as well.
Just because you can...
Is this thing pronounced purge os? Even if its not supposed to be..
Maybe the first server most people buy is a home NAS or wireless gateway. Those types of devices should also be able to act as the host as long as they have pluggable storage.
I think if you could plug in an old iPhone/Android and have it become your host I don’t see why that couldn’t be mainstream. Everyone (who would consider using this) has an old phone they can plug in and forget.