cloud

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cloud in short means “other people's servers”, typically used for storage or computing, and for the IndieWeb, there some personal cloud solutions. Such "cloud computing" services are pitched (though rarely in practice) as providing online services that are on-demand, broadly available, elastic, and measured service.

See National Institute of Standards and Technology's definition of cloud computing for a more jargon-heavy definition and expansions.

Cloud things

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Building block vs apps

Sometimes these on-demand/self-service/elastic/measured cloud services are used for computing building blocks such as storage, computation, and server bandwidth.

Examples: Amazon S3, EC2. Akamai.

The term "cloud" is also used to refer to such services which are applications themselves such as email, blogging, etc. which are almost always silos as well:

Examples: gmail (barely cloud-like in that its storage capacity is slowly growing), Blogger, Wordpress.com

Relation to IndieWeb

See personal cloud

Misuse

just means internet or server

There many intentional and unintentional misuses of the word "cloud" in reference to "cloud computing" which do not meet the definition or criteria above in one or more ways. As such the following phrases can typically be substituted:

"in the cloud": = on the internet
"personal cloud": = personal (virtual) server

marketing and branding

As "cloud" is a more recent (and shorter/catchier) term than "server" or "internet" or "virtual host", there are also now commercial services which use "cloud" in the name of their service which do not actually provide cloud computing services.

Apple iCloud - neither dynamic nor elastic.[1]
...

Articles

http://www.stelligent.com/why-the-private-cloud-is-a-lie-and-other-myths-of-cloud-computing/
http://adactio.com/journal/5565/
Whereas other bullshit marketing terms once had a defined meaning that has eroded over time due to repeated use and abuse—Ajax, Web 2.0, HTML5, UX—“the cloud” is a term that sets out to deceive from the outset, imbued with the same Lakoffian toxicity as “downsizing” or “friendly fire.” It is the internet equivalent of miasma theory.
...

t-shirt

http://stml.spreadshirt.co.uk/the-cloud-is-a-lie-men-A16241807

in error messages

for "feedly is over capacity".

personal cloud
bulshytt
hosting
silos
Shade (AKA "cloud" is a marketing name to obscure sources of concern) https://twitter.com/computerfact/status/1192938091201335296
- "industry: would you like to move all your code and data to a rich man's personal computer?
  programmer: what no that sounds like a bad idea
  industry: ok would you like to run everything in "the cloud"?
  programmer: oh that sounds fluffy and nice yes please" @computerfact November 8, 2019
https://twitter.com/whitingdev/status/1472074487994617859
- "reasons to want a cloud provider:
  a) they handle liability
  b) they build/maintain it
  c) you want something always online because the protocol is online-first
  d) you want massive, quick, private storage
  e) you want to search / compute on lots of data
  
  vs just a raspberry pi." @whitingdev December 18, 2021
Why not cloud: 2023-07-01 File over app
…most of these artifacts are out of our control. They are stored on servers, in databases, gated behind an internet connection, and login to a cloud service.