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Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers

rachelbythebay.com

81–90 of 110 posts

Re: Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respectfully disagree. It should be public record when a product or service fails to perform to the expectation of the customer. This is why we have outlets such as Yelp and Amazon reviews. There is no incentive to improve the product if they aren't put on blast.

“Public record” is not equivalent to “in the tech press”. If there was a central registery of IT operational errors, where data was carefully reported by all public and private companies, then your stance would be absolutely understandable. But in today’s press climate, the focus would be on dragging their name through the mud for clickbait, rather than on interviewing them about their plans to improve going forward…

If a car exploded, should we withhold the name of the car company?

Re: Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers

#83
post #61

This is why I don't trust my own videos/photos/documents/notes/etc. to "the cloud". How many examples like this have there been where peoples stuff just disappears one day with no way to bring it back? More than I can count. Though, saying I don't trust my files to the cloud is not the same as saying I don't use the cloud. I keep two copies of all of my files in 2 physical location. However, both of those physical lo…

I need to add cloud mirroring. What cloud service are you using? I was about to give Backblaze Personal a try, but stopped because I don't like how they handle encryption. If I'm understanding their site correctly, restoring requires giving them your key. I'd prefer something where decrypting for restoration is client side. I'm currently contemplating Backblaze B2 or Amazon Glacier using Arq or Duplicati[1] or someth…

By the way, with backblaze you can specify your own key. They just can't help you if you forget, and you loose all your data :)

Re: Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers

#84
post #71
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little OT, but I’m curious to know what made Urbis better than the other options out there.

Probably the most unique thing about Urbis was their system for generating reviews which I thought was pretty interesting -- reviews on your work were locked by default. In order to unlock a review, you had to write a review of equal word count on someone else's work. I thought this was pretty successful method for incentivizing active participation on the site, something I haven't seen replicated anywhere else. Alth…

This principle has been around the net since the original Oracle of Delphi (mid 80s? actually started in 1976!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Oracle

Re: Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers

#85
post #61

This is why I don't trust my own videos/photos/documents/notes/etc. to "the cloud". How many examples like this have there been where peoples stuff just disappears one day with no way to bring it back? More than I can count. Though, saying I don't trust my files to the cloud is not the same as saying I don't use the cloud. I keep two copies of all of my files in 2 physical location. However, both of those physical lo…

I need to add cloud mirroring. What cloud service are you using? I was about to give Backblaze Personal a try, but stopped because I don't like how they handle encryption. If I'm understanding their site correctly, restoring requires giving them your key. I'd prefer something where decrypting for restoration is client side. I'm currently contemplating Backblaze B2 or Amazon Glacier using Arq or Duplicati[1] or someth…

Arq goes to OneDrive too. Just remember to exclude the Arq files from files that are downloaded by default if you're running the client. I'd look at B2 as well, but for the few terabytes I'd use it for it's a bit expensive with the plummeting Australian Dollar.

Re: Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they clearly didn’t realize that they would end up deleting their original data because they had tried to skimp on storage…

I think that's the point though - you never realize this kind of failure until it's too late. That's why you're better off biasing towards just paying for space and being careful with added complexity unless you really need it. Being cheap about this is just likely to lead to more bugs and cost in debugging later anyway. There are tradeoffs and exceptions, but there's a reason the saying exists.

It's not just about the cost of file storage. Storing information can be a legal liability.

This is why businesses that deal with information need staff who are able to reason about the lifecycle of information.

Re: Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers

#87
This is reminiscent of the Reply All podcast's episode about a photo storage service that had major problems. If i recall correctly, some photos in that story were actually recovered, but it took a while.

...Okay, I did a little looking, and the followup to this episode was about a month later[2], and actually some pictures were able to be recovered after another company bought out the first and tried to save the photos. In any case, it's an interesting case study of an incident that shares someof the same themes.

1: https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/71-the-picture-taker#e...

2: https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/77-the-grand-tapestry-...

Re: Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers

#88
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the point though - you never realize this kind of failure until it's too late. That's why you're better off biasing towards just paying for space and being careful with added complexity unless you really need it. Being cheap about this is just likely to lead to more bugs and cost in debugging later anyway. There are tradeoffs and exceptions, but there's a reason the saying exists.

It's not just about the cost of file storage. Storing information can be a legal liability. This is why businesses that deal with information need staff who are able to reason about the lifecycle of information.

True, but in this case they were storing what was the core value of the site and what the users were using the site for. It’d be different if they were just collecting all PII forever because they didn’t want to think about it.

Re: Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers

#90
I make it a point to Dropbox critical files(non-media) & do monthly backups of my phone & Mac to 2 physical drives. I'd love for something which does this daily of specific folders on my phone & Mac & makes sure there are no duplicates etc. And then on a monthly basis archive them to 2 or more different cloud storage vendors.
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