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

201–210 of 421 posts

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

#201

Post by OneEyedRobot »

benbristow wrote: post #23

Your 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?

Jeesh, that's easy.

You encrypt the algorithms too.

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

#202

Post by SXX »

missedthecue wrote: post #148
imagine99 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What about Google photos is evil? I don't get it.

Okay it's easy to downvote, but I'll elaborate instead. First of all Google is trainihg AI models on your data and also able to create shadow profiles for people including those who decide against using Google services.

They also used dark pattern on Android for years by enabling cloud sync by default for everything. So a lot of people got all their photos uploaded while they had no idea about feature.

So it's not any different from Facebook that constantly tried to collect as much data on you as possible. Do you know what is evil about facebook?

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

#203

Post by vishnumohandas »

surfsvammel wrote: post #192

I like the look of this, and I’ll keep watch on it. But, all the negative comments here (even those which are well founded) really is discouraging. Must be absolutely horrifying to post your product on Show HN

Thank you! :)

The point of this post was to be critiqued, and we think everyone has their hearts in the right place.

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

#204

Post by ignoramous »

vishnumohandas wrote: post #196
ignoramous wrote: post #170

Congratulations, this looks neat. A couple questions around this venture: 1. Does ente.io intend to remain bootstrapped or seek funding (tiny-vc, crowd, crypto, public)? 2. Is the founding team in it for long term; serious about sustaining this business in face of capable incumbents (some upcoming ones https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27338008 , some established ones like nextcloud.com, getkeepsafe.com) and compe…

Venture: 1. We did apply to YC a few months ago, but was rejected in the interviews because they felt that the total addressable market was low. We don't know if other VCs will feel differently and we haven't applied anywhere else since. Perhaps paid subscriptions is in a way public funding? :) 2. The rate at which photos are being taken (a trillion a year), we believe that the market is large enough for multiple pla…

Thanks so much for taking time to answer these.

As a fellow founder/eng in the digital consumer privacy space, I can tell you that it remains fringe. And it isn't clear if it will take off in an exponential way anytime soon as, from what I have noticed, VC-backed startups in this space trying to pry out growth have indeed struggled (SilentCircle, as one example). Competing with free [0], as it turns out, may make for a decent-sized lifestyle business, but may not bring in VC-warranted returns (Netflix vs BitTorrent / Spotify vs LimeWire notwithstanding).

Enterprise security and privacy remains very lucrative however, if you are considering pivots :)

Please consider getting ente.io's cryptography reviewed by cryptographers. It does not inspire confidence so much so that I feel ente.io frontends are better used with a tarsnap backend.

Thanks again.

[0] https://kk.org/thetechnium/better-than-fre/

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

#205

Post by sillysaurusx »

Jcowell wrote: post #187
sillysaurusx wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for pointing that out. I actually had the opportunity to sync my iPhone photos to Google Photos, but opted to decline. This made me reconsider; cheers.

Why would this feature , that is also apart of Photos, make you reconsider ?

As much as I like apple / iCloud / my iPhone, I do like the idea of seeing all the places on a map that I’ve traveled with my lovely wife Emily. We’re hoping to go to the Seychelles if the next three months work out at my contract gig.

I like the idea of being able to type “water” and see a bunch of water bottles mixed in with all the water-y places we’ve visited.

What sealed the deal was to see it on a map. I typed “water” into Photos just now, and it did a pretty good job. But there’s something peculiar about being able to look at a pin and say “I’ve been at that pin.”

Just a silly thing. But it costs me nothing to get it, so I want it.

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

#206

Post by imhoguy »

koheripbal wrote: post #19
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.)

The answer to this question is why the only solution in the long run is local storage.

Just imagined a distopian future where storing data locally would be illegal, for the society good of course /s

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

#207

Post by vishnumohandas »

ignoramous wrote: post #204
vishnumohandas wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Venture: 1. We did apply to YC a few months ago, but was rejected in the interviews because they felt that the total addressable market was low. We don't know if other VCs will feel differently and we haven't applied anywhere else since. Perhaps paid subscriptions is in a way public funding? :) 2. The rate at which photos are being taken (a trillion a year), we believe that the market is large enough for multiple pla…

Thanks so much for taking time to answer these. As a fellow founder/eng in the digital consumer privacy space, I can tell you that it remains fringe. And it isn't clear if it will take off in an exponential way anytime soon as, from what I have noticed, VC-backed startups in this space trying to pry out growth have indeed struggled (SilentCircle, as one example). Competing with free [0], as it turns out, may make for…

Thanks for sharing your insights, I have bookmarked the essay.

We do intend to get our architecture reviewed by cryptographers. It's an expensive process but we should be able to be able to afford it soon.

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

#209

Post by Gargyle »

Last time I looked at your servixe it was web only and did in-browser crypto. This is essentially useless for 2 reasons: - There is no effetive Versioning. - Application and Storage-Vendor are the same entity. Therefore if you are hacked or coerced you can push code to me. The only defense is proper version pinning and compiling myself / taking it from FDroid.

Photos are among the highest value phone data. I dont take chances here. You do not post the apk signing key prominently on your front page. Your commits are not signed. You host on Microsoft owned Github.

Why would I trust you? This seems like yolo-development.

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

#210

Post by vishnumohandas »

llIIllIIllIIl wrote: post #193
abhinavDev wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Exactly my point. I’m getting close to 200gb, but it’s gonna be a while I reach 1000gb. So essentially i’ll be paying for the space I don’t use for years.

Sharing my response to a similar question we ran into on reddit[1].

> Our pricing is structured such that the 1TB plan costs only 3x the 100GB plan. This model works under the assumption that the average utilization of a 1TB plan (across all customers) will be close to 30%.

> So if we bring in an intermediary plan (say 500GB), we would have increase the pricing of the 1TB plan (since at least 50% will now be utilized), and also set the price of the 500GB plan to around 2-2.5x of the 100GB plan.

> This seemed like a lose-lose situation for everyone with growing storage needs.

> Since Apple and Google don't support per GB billing yet (which IMO would have been the fairest way to go), we had to pick buckets, and the current ones seemed like the fairest possible.

--

I hope this makes sense. Please let me know if we can do better.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/enteio/comments/p4m0ee/more_price_t...

Post reply on HN