To me, the main selling point of Google Photos is their excellent AI search (yes, I understand the implications). Otherwise, Syncthing covers all of my requirements. Is there any alternative that has this kind of indexing/search?
Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
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Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
#332I tried it, but unfortunately the complete lack of auto-categorization in all of those e2ee photo storage apps renders them unusable for anyone with a large library. Ente is not the first one to do this, there are many others with similarly lacking UX, like MEGA. Both Apple Photos and Google Photos: 1. have easy search by location on a map of the world. 2. allow browsing to any date in an instant. 3. index photos by…
Have you tried the Synology Photos app (https://www.synology.com/en-global/DSM70/SynologyPhotos [1])
While it does have some kinks it's surprisingly good and has the features you are looking for in a locally hosted/publicly available option. You do have to buy one of their NAS's however.
I have moved over to this partly for privacy and partly due to cost (I produce way too many photos per year to store them economically at Google)
[1] fyi this is the reasonably 'new' instantiation as linked to here, they EOL'd the very old, different app of the same name from their v old NAS's. Adding that here in case anyone has or buys an old NAS, you may get the old version of the app - I think you need a NAS with a decent processor to perform the face detection etc.
Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other day I sent out a link made with Google Photos' "create link" function. That's not a share to another user, just a link that anyone can open, no Google account required. But one person showed me that hitting that link on her phone, Google wanted to authenticate her before showing the picture. That is utterly unacceptable.
Genuinely curious - could you elaborate on why that is so unacceptable? What does requiring authentication imply, or lead to in the future?
Prevents sharing with friends who don't have a Google account. It breaks what could be a general purpose sharing mechanism.
Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
>lets me search my library using text search for anything This is untrue, and actually one of the reasons I hope a strong competitor to Google Photos comes along soon. The search function is, for whatever reason, heavily censored and perhaps even biased in some circumstances. Worse, it is completely useless. For example, the query "fat" returns nothing, despite the fact that my gallery is filled with drawing referenc…
Think of it from Google's POV. Imagine if the tabloids found out about a situation of someone searching for 'fat' in the search bar and then it coming back with pictures of themselves or their friends - that could cause some serious controversy.
Well, this gets to the heart of one of the issues with the current approach to AI. Statistical consensus doesn't always align with a user's personal view or desires. I don't know how you solve the problem; my issue is that Google doesn't seem to know, either, but they insist that they do.
Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in the same boat, have been watching, love that they have a businessmodel and am waiting for the time when they are covering my needs (face recognition, object / scene detection...). I'd even pay a 2$/month "lurker" subscription which has like 100mb of storage so I can check the features from time to time and support the team.
As someone who's never used cloud-based photo browsers... I always assumed the facial recognition aspect was primarily for social media apps that try to tag known faces from a user's friends group, to put it in those people's news feeds or something. It's one reason I avoid being photographed and ask people not to tag my name to my face if they do post a photo I'm in. I'm wondering, what's the utility of facial recog…
> as I'm rethinking it, would this just be for searching your own images for a particular person...?
My Synology NAS has face recognition and it is wonderful even if (actually: especially since) it has no pre-existing database and doesn't (to the best of my knowledge) share its database.
For someone like me who manages family photos for the entire family but isn't to good at recognizing faces it is just brilliant.
Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
#3366
Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
> how are you going to improve your model in a privacy preserving method We will not improve our models with the help of user-data and will resort to only pre-trained models that are available in the public domain.
This is one of your best replies in the whole thread. Yes to this. Prove it as well.
Why is it such a great reply? They didn't really answer my question.
Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pity that once uploaded there's no way to get your data back from Google. API scrambles EXIF location metatada while Takeout, besides being pain to use on an ongoing basis, fails if you store too many files.
FWIW, ente processes all of the location metadata generated by Takeout during an import via web.ente.io.
That's probably the best once can do other than reverse engineering the protocol used by Google Photos Android app - as that app seems to be able to download files with full exif, unlike official API.
Unfortunately, as mentioned, multiple users report that Takeout does not work once you get past certain size (I have 350GB and it fails every time). It's been failing for years, probably always. Of course Google doesn't care.
I guess if someone was in EU they could try to ask Google for their data under GDPR data portability, face inevitable non-answer and then go to court if they are determined enough.
Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is one of your best replies in the whole thread. Yes to this. Prove it as well.
Why is it such a great reply? They didn't really answer my question.
I liked the clarity of response. Public models, not user data seems a clear answer to your question?
Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos
#340Interesting but prices is high!
Guys if you need to hide sensitive information while screen sharing or video recording, check this https://blurdata.net/