I don't think I'm ready to invest in a photo hosting solution again, be it with my time, my money, or my data, without it being open source/self-hostable or at least open core with a community behind it.
Been duped too many times.
Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
81–90 of 421 posts
Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I recall correctly "ente" has a pleasant meaning in Portuguese. Google Translate says it means "loved" but I feel like my paperback dictionary said something else... Edit: I think it's similar to "being"
Since OP seems to be from Kerala it might be in Malayalam."ente" in Malayalam(Language of Kerala) means "mine".
This!
Also, I've a thing for rubber ducks.
Also, the domain was available. :)
Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
#83The 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…
Yeah, if you are client-side encrypted, where you choose to host doesn't really matter because even with a warrant there is nothing you could do to recover data, so why not go for something like Wasabi?
Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
#84Very reasonable pricing, though you could advertise the free 'trial' tier a bit more prominently. I thought the service was paid only until I re-checked the pricing page and read the tiny gray on black text before writing this comment.
You also didn't set a single tracking cookie. Nice.
Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
#85Your homepage says "protect your photos/faces etc. from algorithms" The algorithms are what makes Google Photos; Google Photos. If I wanted to just store my photos I'd throw them in a S3 bucket or Dropbox or something. Google Photos lets me automatically categorise my photos by person, lets me search my library using text search for anything (e.g. I can search 'museum' and see pictures I've taken in museums). That is…
> So you're going to implement algorithms then? Yes, we will implement the algorithms, purely on the client side, such that we don't hold indexes to your personal data. But I understand how that piece of text could have thrown you off, I'll think of ways to rephrase it. Thanks for pointing it out.
You can run algorithms locally and still violate privacy by uploading private facts derived from the
data with algorithms. Saying you won’t hold “indexes” doesn’t begin to cover it.
Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
#86What 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.)
the answer is right here https://ente.io/transparency
Yes, this is a good first step towards a true warrant canary, but you need to date it and provide a cryptographic hash of the content.
Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
#87what are currently the best open source projects that allow you to fully automate and manage deployment of your own personal (or multi-user) cloud photos/drive storage service? I found:
[1]: https://github.com/nextcloud
[2]: https://github.com/Piwigo with S3 extension: https://piwigo.org/ext/extension_view.php?eid=691
[3]: others https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/the-big-alternatives-to-google-photos-showdown/ which mentions the most feature packed to be https://photoprism.app/Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
#88Re: 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…
It's funny, I see this being the first feature they kill off unfortunately when it becomes the new super easy way of sharing CSAM on shady forums.
Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
#89The 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 ha…
Hey, so the project had initially started off as a self-hostable software (with an option to buy a pre-configured device). We realized soon that it's hard to monetize such a product in the consumer space to the point where it can become self-sustaining.
We don't have a problem with offering a self-hosted variant. But given our limited engineering bandwidth we had to take a call on who our target market should be, and we felt that it was more important to make privacy accessible to people like my mom and dad. Hence this direction.
Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
#90Your homepage says "protect your photos/faces etc. from algorithms" The algorithms are what makes Google Photos; Google Photos. If I wanted to just store my photos I'd throw them in a S3 bucket or Dropbox or something. Google Photos lets me automatically categorise my photos by person, lets me search my library using text search for anything (e.g. I can search 'museum' and see pictures I've taken in museums). That is…
We need to make this stuff local again, that will be the real competitor to big corp Foo... no servers, no end-to-end, no service cost, no ads, no privacy issues, no random revokation of accounts without recourse, just one end - the users. We can have face detection etc locally if people want it... cycles, it's going to happen eventually.