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Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

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Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#152
post #102
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can be just calculated risk. Incredible damage for some users can be negligible damage to the company. In this case just 10TB of data was lost, so maybe thousands of users for the long term storage option. Losing customer data has potential for big reputation or brand damage, but surprisingly often the damage is relatively small. Putting in too much effort when potential damage to business is minimal may not be…

A “calculated risk” doesn’t make it okay when the risk is all on the consumer losing their memories. This corporate view on business risk alone is unethical.

Limited resources means you can never realistically mitigate 100% of the risk. You just have to decide how much risk your company will accept.

People still die in risky surgeries. But we do them despite the risk on the consumer is them being dead.

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cloud is not a backup Of course the cloud is a backup. Why do you think it isn’t? Because it may break? All storage may break. The cloud is a backup. Like all backups, you need multiple independent backups.

And you need to check that you can actually restore from backups - which is a step a remarkable number of people forget to do.

I was a Unix administrator responsible for backup many years ago. When I asked the manager of the IT department for funds to do a disaster recovery exercise I was turned down flat and told that no amount of discussion would change his mind.

We knew that we could restore individual files because users asked for them when they had accidentally deleted them but we had no idea whether or not our procedures for restoring the systems themselves would work.

Luckily we never had to find out.

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then turn off the computer and cancel your internet.

You know, people can hold even very critical views of things without full-on 120% zealot-level boycott, especially if it's about the very system that produces next to every single thing necessary for life and survival, save oxygen maybe.

Capital markets produced the the goods and services that make this forum possible. If you hate capitalism, you hate basically everything that got you to this conversation. So why not stop feeding into it, in the few obvious ways you can?

Because it's fake, you don't hate capitalism if you like Hacker News, even if you think you can. Hacker News is literally owned and operated by venture capital firm

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#155
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't follow. That's like saying: - Slavery is bad. - Then don't wear cotton clothes. Maybe instead change the system so there's no slavery, and have non-slaves pick up cotton and make cotton clothes? Non-capitalist countries can have computers and internet too. In fact most computers today are made in "communist" China.

> In fact most computers today are made in "communist" China. No Most computers today are made in "Special Economic Zone" China that has exempted almost all communist economic policies in favor of Free market capitalism because even hard core authoritarian communists know that their economic model is a path to poverty for everyone including the leaders

Nevertheless, such a system is quite a long way from a true free-market approach. And I think it demonstrates that market based systems that aren't "free markets" can be quite effective, and indeed from a theoretical perspective it seems to me very likely that such approaches work better than a "remove regulation at all costs" approach.

EDIT: there was initially a typo in this comment. I meant "aren't free markets", not "are free markets".

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#156
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can be just calculated risk. Incredible damage for some users can be negligible damage to the company. In this case just 10TB of data was lost, so maybe thousands of users for the long term storage option. Losing customer data has potential for big reputation or brand damage, but surprisingly often the damage is relatively small. Putting in too much effort when potential damage to business is minimal may not be…

This comment reads as "This is normal; nothing to see here move along". Which is more of an indictment on the state of things than on the comment itself. If you can't protect people's shit, don't offer to hold onto it for money!

No, that comment sounds like the insurance job described in Fight Club[1]

> Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

[1] Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiB8GVMNJkE

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there won't be at this rate. Besides, it is now a net negative for their users. 'The cloud is not a backup' should be a mantra that everybody that uses the cloud for their work and personal data be familiar with.

> The cloud is not a backup Of course the cloud is a backup. Why do you think it isn’t? Because it may break? All storage may break. The cloud is a backup. Like all backups, you need multiple independent backups.

Ok, let me spell that out more clearly. Having something stored in the cloud does not mean that you no longer need backups.

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#158
So today I learnt:

1. Canon don’t have any backup procedures in place for their cloud platform. Any hacker now will be salivating at the idea of pulling a ransomware hack I imagine.

2. Canon developers follow the ‘test in production’ methodology of continuous integration.

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Filtering this stuff from a master transaction log is kinda ludicrous, not looking forward to implementing that.

It's sometimes easier to encrypt everything sensitive with a user-specific key and destroy the key.

That's how I've done it as well. The files are backed up for as long as we want, they are just useless once the user's secret is trashed. You can do the userid blocklist's on database restores etc. but for long term backup file storage it becomes silly.

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there won't be at this rate. Besides, it is now a net negative for their users. 'The cloud is not a backup' should be a mantra that everybody that uses the cloud for their work and personal data be familiar with.

The cloud is a backup. Just like any other backup you should test restore or at least verify the data regularly. I trust Google more than a random hard drive (to not lose random bits) in this respect. And unless your admin configured it away, GSuite allows takeout just like GMail afaik?

> GSuite allows takeout just like GMail afaik

Hm, interesting ok, I will look into that. I didn't think of using takeout. Thank you.

The only option I found before was to allow some random third party application access to all my files which was not an option.

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