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Fuck the Cloud (2009)

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Re: Fuck the Cloud (2009)

#111

Post by alextgordon »

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…

Read this and then consider if you ever want to write something like it. https://www.facebook.com/orainwikihosting/

Re: Fuck the Cloud (2009)

#112

Post by spydum »

nsfyn55 wrote: post #34

>Don’t blow anything into the Cloud that you don’t have a personal copy of. I don't understand this logic. Amazon's S3 offers service level agreements with failure rates that at one point implied the statistical likelihood of losing an object to be once in "thousands of years". When dealing with any sort of stable storage this is simply something I cannot offer. I couldn't produce a set up locally with the resources…

What is your recourse if service level is not met? A monthly credit? Your data is probably worth more to you than the value of its hosting. Too many people rest on the laurels of SLA.

Re: Fuck the Cloud (2009)

#113

Post by jacquesm »

alextgordon wrote: post #111
fixermark wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Read this and then consider if you ever want to write something like it. https://www.facebook.com/orainwikihosting/

That's very painful to read. Codespaces went pretty much the same way, here is what they wrote:

"Code Spaces will not be able to operate beyond this point, the cost of resolving this issue to date and the expected cost of refunding customers who have been left without the service they paid for will put Code Spaces in an irreversible position both financially and in terms of ongoing credibility. As such at this point in time we have no alternative but to cease trading and concentrate on supporting our affected customers in exporting any remaining data they have left with us."

They promised a follow up once they got to the bottom of what happened but they never did, I'm still curious what the whole story was.

Re: Fuck the Cloud (2009)

#114

Post by nsfyn55 »

dmoo wrote: post #86
nsfyn55 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Maybe ask the people of Greece if they "trust the banks". Shit happens, a local copy of your stuff does no harm at all in the same way as some cash on the hip is cool in case your card stops working.

Do you keep your money in a shoe box under your bed or stuffed in your mattress? I'd hope no, but then that begs the question "where do you keep it?" I'd assume not in a bank because any bank can fail at any moment and they are only insured by an instutition as flaky at the United States Treasury department. Governments collapse all the time just ask the Soviet Union. Right?

The failure probabilities are relative. And everyone here is equivocating. As if the likelihood of failure is evenly dispersed. You indicate that storing customer data in the cloud is "playing fast and loose" but I'd argue the opposite. Not having a cloud backup is what is "fast and loose"

Imagine you are an independent bank. You need to move your customers deposits. Do you load sacks of cash into your corporate minivan or hire an armored car service? Well lets look closer. With the latter you are giving up control, right? You have no control over the quality measures an armored car service might take. Yet somehow not contracting them seems like foolishness. The reason is obvious. Its because you know in this case that transporting money isn't your expertise. Its not something you can focus adequate time and resources on perfecting. You also can't spread the risk of failure across a lot of customers, absorb that failure, and make your service better for the next go. The exact same logic applies to long term storage of data. If that isn't your only function its extremely hard to get it right.

Re: Fuck the Cloud (2009)

#115

Post by nsfyn55 »

tzudot wrote: post #91
nsfyn55 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

It doesn't share the exact same properties, but you can make the comparison with any given copy. So yes the analogy holds.

Re: Fuck the Cloud (2009)

#116

Post by r3bl »

nekopa wrote: post #96
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?

This was the article that convinced me to try: http://www.27months.com/2013/10/its-always-sunny-in-iceland-...

I read both that one and the one posted here like an hour before this one got posted on HN and they have convinced me to give running my own server a try.

In the meantime, I have just downloaded a backup of all of my data from Twitter and Facebook (Facebook's archive was like 15x as big as the Twitter's archive even though I'm using Twitter way more) that I am going to save on my server, I have switched to POP instead of IMAP on my current email service and I am testing out ownCloud in a Docker container.

Re: Fuck the Cloud (2009)

#117

Post by jacquesm »

nsfyn55 wrote: post #114
dmoo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe ask the people of Greece if they "trust the banks". Shit happens, a local copy of your stuff does no harm at all in the same way as some cash on the hip is cool in case your card stops working.

Do you keep your money in a shoe box under your bed or stuffed in your mattress? I'd hope no, but then that begs the question "where do you keep it?" I'd assume not in a bank because any bank can fail at any moment and they are only insured by an instutition as flaky at the United States Treasury department. Governments collapse all the time just ask the Soviet Union. Right? The failure probabilities are relative. An…

I keep my money spread out across multiple accounts with multiple banks up to the insured limit. Because yes, banks can fail.

> You indicate that storing customer data in the cloud is "playing fast and loose" but I'd argue the opposite. Not having a cloud backup is what is "fast and loose"

Basic reading comprehension failure, that is not what GP is arguing.

He's arguing that if your live data lives in the cloud your backup copy should not be in the cloud and vice versa.

Re: Fuck the Cloud (2009)

#118

Post by jokr004 »

nsfyn55 wrote: post #34

>Don’t blow anything into the Cloud that you don’t have a personal copy of. I don't understand this logic. Amazon's S3 offers service level agreements with failure rates that at one point implied the statistical likelihood of losing an object to be once in "thousands of years". When dealing with any sort of stable storage this is simply something I cannot offer. I couldn't produce a set up locally with the resources…

> Amazon's S3 offers service level agreements with failure rates that at one point implied the statistical likelihood of losing an object to be once in "thousands of years".

Where things like that in 2009 when this article was written?

Re: Fuck the Cloud (2009)

#119

Post by nsfyn55 »

alextgordon wrote: post #111
fixermark wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Read this and then consider if you ever want to write something like it. https://www.facebook.com/orainwikihosting/

Once again. I only entertain statistical arguments. This anecdotal nonsense is for the birds. Any given service can fail at any time. This is known kaleesi. You can poop out case after case of some shit wiki platform losing your bird watching posts and it won't make a lick of difference. You need to show me that its better with the magic of statistics. Should be easy peasy show me that you have lost less data(proportionally) than amazon over your entire career.

I can make this even easier. Its almost certainly going to boil down to this question. Have you ever lost even a single byte of data? Cause if you have, you aren't even in the same ballpark.

Re: Fuck the Cloud (2009)

#120

Post by swiley »

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…

He acknowledges and supports that. He's not saying "don't use facebook" but "facebook is fun but temporary, like a party. Don't leave stuff there."
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