Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 421 posts

Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos

#71

Post by sharps1 »

abhinavDev wrote: post #25
llIIllIIllIIl wrote: post #14

Awesome work. Although the price is 5x of google’s, the privacy is worth it. Is there a family plan? We currently have 200gb google photos plan with my wife, but to migrate we have to take 1000gb plan (which we fill maybe in 8 years at current pace of adding content). Maybe something in between 100gb and 1000gb would find it’s audience.

Yes, we have both a 100GB and a 1000GB plans, you can check them on https://ente.io/#pricing

Pricing is expensive comparing it to mega (https://mega.io/pro). Mega is end to end encrypted as well (Mega is 2tb for $118. Source code is also available https://mega.io/sourcecode).

Why would someone pick your service?

Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos

#72

Post by arendtio »

From what I have seen, I like Photoprism [1] better. Yes, they are a different kind of product, but feature wise they should be considered a competitor.

Yes, ente.io is easier to setup, but there are many things lacking or unpolished (e.g. the image sizes that are being loaded while going through the fotos fullscreen in the browser).

[1] https://photoprism.app

Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos

#74

Post by upofadown »

What is happening here is more properly called client side encryption[1]. End to end encryption is the case where two clients are communicating directly with one another where the identities are established directly between those clients.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client-side_encryption

Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos

#75

Post by vishnumohandas »

12ian34 wrote: post #57

Love the idea, sounds like a lot of hard work has gone into it already. I have been looking for this kind of thing to replace Google Photos. I checked out the website and couldn't find enough about the app's usability. So, I downloaded the (android) app hoping for some kind of demo or further insight into the UX but it's asking me to sign up or login. I guess I'll sign up anyway because I'm curious, but I'd have pref…

Hey, we know that we should have a demo video of sorts so that you don't have to sign up to experience the product. It's due to a lack of resources that we don't have one yet. But we will prioritize this. Sorry for the trouble, I hope it's worth it.

Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos

#76

Post by Aspos »

izacus wrote: post #56
Aspos wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those "algorithms" can run locally, on a NAS or a desktop, generate the metadata and make it available to you only on your mobile. I can see myself paying for such software if it was mature enough.

Synology Photos is one such solution already for example.

I have Synology, actually. Is Synology Photos trustable?

Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos

#77

Post by imagine99 »

Youden wrote: post #46

The monthly storage costs are too high. For the price of 1TB from you (15€), I can buy more than 2 TB just about anywhere else. Commercially, Apple and Google are both 2TB for 10 CHF and Amazon gives you unlimited as part of a Prime membership. Storage providers like Backblaze and Wasabi both charge around $5/TB and that's really the table-stakes price. For the more DIY-inclined, Hetzner sells a 2TB OwnCloud instance…

I fully agree. It's a hard sell getting people to switch from an evil but known cloud provider to an unknown cloud provider that claims to not be evil.

What we do not need is more cloud offerings that can change, vanish or lock us out at the blink of an algorithm's eye.

What we need, rather, are reliable and easy-to-use solutions that allow us to retain full control of our data (i.e. self-hosted and offline) while having feature parity with the big cloud-only solutions.

I for one am convinced that there is plenty of money to be made that way. Perhaps not as much on autopilot as with the quasi-scam that is cloud computing, but people willingly paid hundreds or thousands for software before clouds and subscriptions. People will do so again, if you bring a convincing, unique or competitive product to market.

That being said, I like, appreciate and support this project for its impetus, even though I think its distribution strategy is misguided and fad-driven (re-selling cloud space instead of selling software). It's not too late to change that...

Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos

#78

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

claudiojulio wrote: post #24
ridaj wrote: post #13

What are your plans for when your app is found to host content such as terrorist executions, child porn, etc.? (This isn't trolling, it's something that eventually happens with every product, and I've been wanting a non-Google version myself but wondering how that kind of abuse would be dealt with.)

It is not possible to prove this, because the photos are encrypted.

Encrypted content can be decrypted.

Links and data tranfers can be traced.

Warrants and suponeas can make such traces / actions legal.

Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos

#79

Post by vishnumohandas »

pilingual wrote: post #37

Re: Shared Albums >the receiver just needs a free ente account. I feel like there should be an even more frictionless option to make it easy for family to access photos. For example, if there were a way to just trigger a mailing list when an album is added to, that would be perfect. “Here is an update on our trip: [link]” I love that you mention you are security and privacy focused, and I see how this could conflict…

> if there were a way to just trigger a mailing list when an album is added to, that would be perfect

We can do this if all of the participants are already on ente.

> allowing one viewing via link and future viewings require account

We are hoping to come up with an implementation similar to this where in a link to an album can be shared with N devices. We will persist an accessToken on the viewer's localstorage so that they can re-view the album multiple times without having to sign up.

Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos

#80

Post by me551ah »

One of the biggest reasons why I like Google Photos is all the processing that it does on photos, especially some of the features that you have mentioned (object and face detection, location clustering, image filters, ...). Now to process these photos, you would need to read them and since you are end-to-end encrypted it's up to the clients to do this processing. Would some of these features even run on mobile devices(or for that matter javascript on the web)?, since google uses AI heavily for these tasks. You upload a picture on google, and instantly you get all the processing done on your pictures and they are available for you to browse and search. Google uses custom built AI processors and massive GPUs to get that computation done quickly. To replicate that in javascript on the web and mobile devices is going to be hard since there are few libraries which support it and the mobile devices really cannot compete with the computing power available in the cloud.

I really love the privacy oriented aspect of this service though and I would really like to share one less thing with google. I've always been concerned about being blocked out of my google accounts and losing my photos.

Post reply on HN