241–250 of 454 posts
I previously used external drives, but I moved them to the cloud so they are easily accessible and not have the risk of hardware failures. I guess not a good idea to just rely on cloud providers for important stuff.
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We need education. Education to regular people that unless you have a contract with clear clauses and payments involved your data is worth what you pay. Your expectations from free service should be zero. It can go out of business at any time. Or they can stop offering it at anytime.
> Your expectations from free service should be zero. So it's ok if someone takes your car the next time you park on a free parking lot? It doesn't work that way in the physical world. I don't see why it should work that way in the digital world. Offering to hold your property for free isn't a license to steal or destroy it.
Not the best analogy since the parking lot is just an empty physical space. Taking it away wouldn’t also “delete” your car. The car is actually a separate physical object. But in a cloud drive, the file and the space are the same. Taking away the space is obviously going to take away the file.
On top of all that, the file still exists elsewhere for most people.
Google is the fucking worst. A few years ago I uploaded a bunch of music to Google Music, rather than carrying it around with me through different computers and backups. This was a bunch of priceless stuff -- mp3s from tiny bands (some of whom I personally knew) that cannot be gotten anywhere anymore, recordings of my own bands in college, etc. Of course I deleted them from my devices, and then a few weeks ago I want…
Over a year ago Google Music sent out notices that users can download or migrate their uploaded media to YouTube Music via https://music.youtube.com/transfer . There really wasn't a shortage of notices and blog posts across a wide variety of media outlets instructing people to migrate and warning when Google Music was shutting down.
If think this can happen if a malicious person (a competitor for example) use a bot to mass report your videos. So it might not be as random as you think. I'm currently in a conundrum: I'm completely degoogled except a YT account that I can lose without problem. I have built a website a few weeks ago and I don't think I can get good SEO rankings if I don't use Google console tools. I'm just procrastinating because it…
I think it's important to be pragmatic here. I'm (slowly) in the process of moving away from 'big tech' services where I can, but I still plan to use them where it makes sense (WhatsApp, Discord, YouTube). I'm also evaluating e-mail for a small business and we might be going with Microsoft, even though I would never choose them for my personal e-mail (I left some comments on that topic recently). Taking back our priv…
After seeing posts like this on HN for years, this one officially scared me enough to completely migrate off Gmail altogether. I’m in the process right now of removing my gmail from any online account. Pro-tip: if you use a password manager, it’s as easy as searching for your Gmail address. For all other accounts, I’ve been able to find them by searching for the phrases “verify your email” or “verify email” or “verif…
We think the things we've built up over the years are important, but really they're just digital sandcastles. The only account you have online that matters is your bank account. When everything else goes, it turns out it doesn't affect you in the future. You just create new accounts and move on.
This is extremely concerning. I have several of my daughter's childhood videos on YT as private videos and several hundreds of GBs of pictures in Google photos. And I literally don't have any backup for all this content. I previously used external drives, but I moved them to the cloud so they are easily accessible and not have the risk of hardware failures. I guess not a good idea to just rely on cloud providers for…
Certainly not, but if you're going to rely on cloud providers at all, definitely don't rely on ones that you aren't paying since they have no obligation to ensure your data stays online. If you're paying for your hosting you have established a legal contract that protects you from capricious access loss like the one described in the OP.
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If you're a paid G-Suite user, you might be able to get help that way. I'm pretty sure I have heard of others doing something like that.
In my experience, paid GSuite "support" are just underpaid contractors in developing countries who don't have much power to do anything outside of a few common actions in response to customers' requests.
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Over a year ago Google Music sent out notices that users can download or migrate their uploaded media to YouTube Music via https://music.youtube.com/transfer . There really wasn't a shortage of notices and blog posts across a wide variety of media outlets instructing people to migrate and warning when Google Music was shutting down.
I got those notices and in my case it was "only" dozens of CDs I backed up. I was so frustrated and disgusted that I had taken time to back them up to Google Music that I just let them go. I still have the CDs, hopefully they are still in good enough condition to be backed up again.