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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#211

Post by barbazoo »

ipaddr wrote: post #179
barbazoo wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I wanted to just store my photos I'd throw them in a S3 bucket or Dropbox or something. Neither of those give you any privacy unless you do the encryption yourself in which case you have to build something to access them unencrypted. Have you checked out what the service actually does?

Wouldn't a mega encripted folder make sense for the average person?

Let's say you store your photos in Dropbox but inside an encrypted folder. What would you have to do to view the photos? Unless there client you encrypt your files with has a photo viewer, you'd have to download the pictures and decrypt them to look at them. The whole thing becomes very inconvenient very quickly.

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

#212

Post by pkursawe »

Radim wrote: post #166
vishnumohandas wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 realized soon that it's hard to monetize such [self-hosted product] Spot on. We iterated on a similar product in this space: "privacy preserving", "self-hosted", "open source" etc. But focused on local AI indexing & search of personal videos and photos [0], rather than backups. We ultimately shelved VideoNinja because we weren't able to find a sustainable business angle: * Non-technical people simply don't care…

Just put a price on it, ffs! Make it extensible with plugins. To gain 100% trust make it open source. I am happy to pay good money of a local, non-leaking AI based tagging software for video and photos.

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

#213

Post by barbazoo »

vishnumohandas wrote: post #173
DenisM wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concur. However storage is how they plan to make money, so there will need to be a different monetization strategy for BYO storage. As yet I can't imagine any. EDIT: I think have an idea! Add the S3/OneDrive/Etc support but comment it out. To make use of it one would have to download the source, XCode, compile it, and deploy it. This puts a cap on the number of people who can do that, so you won't end up with every…

So it's a little more complicated than that. Our API server runs the following - authentication - replication - differential sync - and a few more errands that are necessary for the apps to function The solution to this would be to offer a self-hosted variant where you can plug in your S3 credentials. But like I mentioned else where in this thread, maintaining such a project comes with an overhead we cannot afford ri…

I like how Joplin does it for notes. You authorize them as an application in Dropbox or give them credentials to a S3 bucket. Don't get me wrong. I want to pay for your service. I just have to be able to access and decrypt my files if you had to shut down your service all of a sudden.

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

#214

Post by joshmn »

Super cool. Did you roll your own storage solution or are you using one of the many cloud providers? If the latter, which one? I ask because I've done a ton of work in optimizing costs in this area (at large scales), and as the top comment mentioned, $15 is kind of steep for 1TB.

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

#215

Post by papito »

barbazoo wrote: post #139

Please please support custom storage back ends, I'd love to use my Dropbox or S3 or whatever to still fully own my pictures. And I'd love to pay extra to opt out of and analysis, tagging, etc of my photos. Basically I'd like the interface to be similar to Google Photos but with a privacy focused storage engine and clients.

Heh. Yeah. Been building something like this, where you can have your choice of metadata storage and file storage. Out of the box, it would be Sqlite and the local FS, and then you can become adventurous. Postgres and S3? Elastic and S3? Sure.

Needless to say, years later, I am still building it. For one guy doing this on my own time, it's a lift. Maybe after I quit my job soon :)

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

#216

Post by hiimshort »

headmelted wrote: post #128

I’d love for something like this to exist (a fast, clean, well-designed mobile and desktop app for backing up my photos with E2E), but I’d only switch from one of the big providers if it were FOSS and I can bring my own backend target (e.g. S3, SMB, FTP). In a perfect scenario I could generate my own private key to plug into my client devices and just have everything push to private S3 (and then from there archive to…

I'm sure this isn't a popular opinion due to the technical know-how involved, but these days I much prefer to selfhost my own services. Far too many times businesses have gone under, changed their practices, had pricing wildly fluctuate, or remove features I wanted. Having setup a handful of useful services on a cluster, I have much more peace of mind involving my data, feature access, etc.

I would love to see a FOSS version of ente available for me to host. My family is currently split amongst multiple photo library services and it'd be nice to say "Here's ours."

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

#217

Post by pkursawe »

No thanks. My interest in cloud based e2e services is at 0%. I want a local only, AI based photo (video) solution and I am willing to pay good money for it (100/year) if: - its extendable via plugin system - integrates well into Windows Explorer, Finder, Browser, Media Servers - might be open source to fix bugs myself

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

#218

Post by vishnumohandas »

barbazoo wrote: post #213
vishnumohandas wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's a little more complicated than that. Our API server runs the following - authentication - replication - differential sync - and a few more errands that are necessary for the apps to function The solution to this would be to offer a self-hosted variant where you can plug in your S3 credentials. But like I mentioned else where in this thread, maintaining such a project comes with an overhead we cannot afford ri…

I like how Joplin does it for notes. You authorize them as an application in Dropbox or give them credentials to a S3 bucket. Don't get me wrong. I want to pay for your service. I just have to be able to access and decrypt my files if you had to shut down your service all of a sudden.

Our pricing model is such that the product can self sustain itself. Also, we have a desktop app[1] that syncs your uploaded data to a local drive, so you don't have to worry about a lock-in.

But even if we do have to sunset the service due to unforeseeable reasons, our cold storage is relatively inexpensive and we will give our customers ample time to migrate out.

Also, in such a scenario we would want to publish our entire system in an easily deployable way so that all our efforts would not be in vain.

[1]: https://github.com/ente-io/bhari-frame/releases/latest

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

#219

Post by vishnumohandas »

joshmn wrote: post #214

Super cool. Did you roll your own storage solution or are you using one of the many cloud providers? If the latter, which one? I ask because I've done a ton of work in optimizing costs in this area (at large scales), and as the top comment mentioned, $15 is kind of steep for 1TB.

Hey, we're currently using two S3 compliant storage providers (Backblaze and Scaleway). I would love to talk more about how we could reduce our pricing. Please let me know if I can reach out to you over the email mentioned on your HN profile. Thanks!

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

#220

Post by Shank »

I'll bite. I think you've got a really really promising product here. The one thing I'd add is that at least from initial testing, the iOS app doesn't detect and offer to backup nested albums. Specifically, I have an album with another album nested inside, and then another three albums nested inside that. The first album and second album contain no photos, but the 3rd level down does, and the app doesn't see them.

Other than that, I think you've got a really seriously good product here. libsodium + XChaCha20 is really really good in terms of encryption technology. You've picked all of the right things! Well done :)

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