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Fuck the Cloud (2009)

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Re: Fuck the Cloud (2009)

#91

Post by tzudot »

nsfyn55 wrote: post #75
dspillett wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> demonstrate that ... on a number of cloud platforms ... that their rates of data loss are significantly higher than your "home spun" storage You seem to be missing the point. People are not saying "don't use cloud storage at all " They are saying "don't use cloud storage exclusively " You might trust that your cloud providers will never be hacked, that your individual account on them will never be hacked, that they…

>For truly essential data at least one of those copies is both offline and offsite. But the fact remains that where ever you choose to put it "offline and offsite" the odds of it being lost are orders of magnitude greater then its persistent and redundant storage on a reputable cloud provider. Even if you put it on the most stable storage you can find and lock it in a underground safe. You can't guarantee its integri…

> To put it in other words you are advocating storing your money in a mattress because you don't "trust the banks"

In this case, money can't be compared to digital data. You can make multiple copies of digital data on our own but not of your money tucked away into a mattress, that would be illegal.

Re: Fuck the Cloud (2009)

#92

Post by cowardlydragon »

In enterprises, you either trust the cloud, or your local data center people.

The local data center people will threaten and lord over you with their hardware powers unless you have the cloud alternative.

And you're not entirely wrong about the cloud.

So don't trust either.

A modern business should have at least two external cloud providers and a local option.

Re: Fuck the Cloud (2009)

#94

Post by jacquesm »

fixermark wrote: post #63
jacquesm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until your control panel gets hacked and you lose all your data. See: codespaces.com (assuming it wasn't an inside job or a dumb mistake, but even then the same rules apply). So no, DON'T BLOW ANYTHING INTO THE CLOUD THAT YOU DON'T HAVE A COPY OF. It has nothing to do with 'not invented here', it has everything to do with your inability to outsource your responsibilities. The degree to which people rely on others to…

What's the relative risk that my specific control panel will get hacked and I, specifically, will lose all my data, vs. the risk that data on my local store will be compromised by a virus on my computer encrypting my whole hard drive and refusing to let go until I send XYZ bitcoins to a specific address? There's risks and then there's risks. As always, you can spend some time and money to mitigate some risk, and deci…

There's risks and there's bankruptcy. If you feel like gambling then be my guest. What's the risk of your house catching fire? Are you insured? What are the risks of getting burgled? Your car stolen, a car accident? Are you insured?

What are the risks of having a bad health issue happen to you? Are you insured?

I'll bet that you don't know the answers to any of those questions, and yet, you are probably insured against all of them.

As for your question in more detail: it happens often enough that for me if you operate your business 'in the cloud' and you don't have a back-up of your data outside of the cloud to guard against catastrophic data loss due to either malice or accident that I'll happily fail you. Think 'sysadmin was depressive, wiped out company' (or maybe you let him/her go and they took revenge or any one of a number of other scenarios that would instantly terminate your existence online if you had not guarded against it).

Risk management is consequences * incidence versus cost to mitigate. If the cost to mitigate is negligible, the risk is measureable and the consequences are terminal then it is a no-brainer to protect yourself against this. At least one of my customers wished they had set up a backup facility for their critical data (too bad, end of story for them) and there is one published case that we all know about. That's two that you can count on and most likely other trouble shooters have similar stories.

I see catastrophic cloud data loss as having a much higher chance of happening than many other items on the list of stuff that I verify before greenlighting an investment.

Re: Fuck the Cloud (2009)

#95

Post by nekopa »

ksk wrote: post #81

It's rather interesting that HN mods allow posts with this kind of language but the moment you are even mildly critical of a comment or commenter, you get a warning about language. I guess the thinking is we look the other way as long as its not hosted on the ycombinator domain.

I think it's more he (the article) is saying fuck to an idea, not a flesh and blood person (as when responding to a comment).

Also, it is possible to have civil debate around a profanity riddled article. That's what this site is trying to achieve.

Re: Fuck the Cloud (2009)

#96

Post by nekopa »

r3bl wrote: post #11

I'm definitely going to start renting my own server somewhere in Europe starting from January. I absolutely agree with everything he said and I really want to claim my own data again (run my own email server and things).

Do you have a write up on running your own email server?

Re: Fuck the Cloud (2009)

#97

Post by zeveb »

fixermark wrote: post #63
jacquesm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until your control panel gets hacked and you lose all your data. See: codespaces.com (assuming it wasn't an inside job or a dumb mistake, but even then the same rules apply). So no, DON'T BLOW ANYTHING INTO THE CLOUD THAT YOU DON'T HAVE A COPY OF. It has nothing to do with 'not invented here', it has everything to do with your inability to outsource your responsibilities. The degree to which people rely on others to…

What's the relative risk that my specific control panel will get hacked and I, specifically, will lose all my data, vs. the risk that data on my local store will be compromised by a virus on my computer encrypting my whole hard drive and refusing to let go until I send XYZ bitcoins to a specific address? There's risks and then there's risks. As always, you can spend some time and money to mitigate some risk, and deci…

If your data is truly valuable to you, then yes, you host it (encrypted, I hope) in a cloud service to protect you from onsite issues; you host it live locally, to work with it — and you have a hard drive in a safe deposit box somewhere, as well, in case something goes wrong with the cloud copy.

Re: Fuck the Cloud (2009)

#98

Post by grayclhn »

nsfyn55 wrote: post #56
pjc50 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

S3 seems great today, and is undoubtedly more technically reliable than any home solution, but history is littered with companies that closed down on very short notice leaving their users' data deleted or inaccessible. Not to mention that billing disputes or legal action could also affect your ability to get data from them. (Jason Scott is speaking from experience here, as one of the people called in to do emergency…

Yeah but once again this problem is statistical in nature. Admittedly the cloud isn't perfect but the question remains. Does the "Counter Party" risk outweigh the chances that my home spun solution would fail? Since the likelihood of failure on my part is orders of magnitude higher then the "counter party" risk would have to be huge, like really enormous. e.g Amazon would constantly have to be on the brink of imminen…

Bank shutdowns are not orderly because banks are important; they're orderly because banks are heavily regulated. If Amazon has an orderly shutdown, it would be because of the selflessness of its owners and managers, which is a pretty fickle thing to bet on.

Re: Fuck the Cloud (2009)

#99

Post by jacquesm »

nsfyn55 wrote: post #75
dspillett wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> demonstrate that ... on a number of cloud platforms ... that their rates of data loss are significantly higher than your "home spun" storage You seem to be missing the point. People are not saying "don't use cloud storage at all " They are saying "don't use cloud storage exclusively " You might trust that your cloud providers will never be hacked, that your individual account on them will never be hacked, that they…

>For truly essential data at least one of those copies is both offline and offsite. But the fact remains that where ever you choose to put it "offline and offsite" the odds of it being lost are orders of magnitude greater then its persistent and redundant storage on a reputable cloud provider. Even if you put it on the most stable storage you can find and lock it in a underground safe. You can't guarantee its integri…

You're entirely free to play fast and loose with your customers data.

It is interesting that even today there are still people arguing against having back-ups because 'the cloud', you'd think that we ITers learn from our mistakes but for some this has to be personal experience before the lessons are learned. Good luck if and when it happens to you, please re-read your comments here at that time. There isn't an IT person that I know that has not been saved by a back-up at some point in their career, the fact that you are lucky so far is not a reason to think you are exempt.

And no, nobody is advocating storing your money in a mattress because you 'don't trust the banks', the point is that you can keep a copy of your critical data for very little money to safeguard against an eventuality that seems to hit the IT world with alarming regularity, even if they use 'the cloud'. Fuck-ups, hacks, disgruntled employees and failures all happen, every day.

Re: Fuck the Cloud (2009)

#100

Post by TheGRS »

Touche wrote: post #36

I think this gets to the heart of "what people value" and Jason is looking at it from a perspective of a collector. I'm also a collector so I feel much like him. I wonder if there's a relationship between collecting and being an introvert. I have no evidence but feel like there is. I think most people just don't value "things" the way our types do. What most people value is their social life. They post pictures to Fa…

I really don't like to marginalize others by what type of personality they are. This is yet another way of putting people into buckets so that you can more easily go about your day without thinking about it much. Before facebook people would keep large collections of photo books so that when family and friends came over they could easily share them. It doesn't mean they valued those pictures any less because they were extroverted vs. introverted. People still keep hard copies of the pictures they cherish the most, like a wedding album. People value all sorts of things, but maybe they see cloud storage as perfectly secure, for the moment. Maybe personality plays into that, but I think its more about your approximate knowledge of the underlying technology that keeps people up at night.
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