Live data from Hacker News

Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

github.com

271–280 of 354 posts

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#271
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you are taking a couple of pictures a day, you only need to run this service for a couple of minutes per day, the rest is wasted. You can configure your server to sleep (scheduled or use WoL), which will halve (or more) that carbon emission number. Speaking of which, individual action will never approach the level that corporate action could. Take a look at the practice of gas flaring (2022 estimate of ~357 milli…

I don't understand how or why this defeatist, nihilistic attitude is growing in popularity. Do people just lack the self awareness to realize their inaction is tantamount to malice?

> I don't understand how or why this defeatist, nihilistic attitude is growing in popularity.

The attitude of "here's a simple step that will cut down your individual carbon emissions, and also please pay attention to the primary sources of the problem"? Because that attitude doesn't seem defeatist or nihilistic at all? I don't think the "profits trump everything" comment was an endorsement of that philosophy.

If I misunderstood, and you were talking about the people hiding behind the companies and industries who are destroying the environment so that they can enrich themselves at everyone's expense then I'd guess that those folks are entirely self-aware and simply don't care that they act out of malice.

It seems like they're willing to hurt anyone and destroy anything if it might grant them a little more money. I wish people would start seeing them for the threat that they are, and spent a lot more of their time thinking about what should be done about those kinds of psychopaths instead of spinning their wheels worrying about how long their computer stays awake.

inaction is bad, but wasted and misdirected action can be every bit as harmful. Focusing on the people who are consistently doing the most harm in the shortest amount of time is only logical unless people have become too defeatist to believe that anything can be done to stop the abuses of industry.

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#272
post #35

I prefer SyncThing on both mobile and desktop devices. It's open source and mature, the server only makes devices findable between each other. It allows 1 or 2 way sync. And it has advanced settings for keeping removed files (e.g. trashbin that cleans anything older than X days.)

I found that SyncThing is not a great solution for the "mobile photo reel" use case. I want my entire photo collection to be easily searchable & accessible from my mobile device, but I don't need a complete copy of my photo reel to be saved to my device. I want to be able to delete things from my phone to free up space, but I want them to still exist in my photo collection that is backed up to the cloud.

> but I don't need a complete copy of my photo reel to be saved to my device

this resonates with me.

what solution are you using?

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#273

I'm aparently boring. My "backup routine" consists of storing photos in iCloud, which is then syncronized "real time" to a local Mac Mini. From the Mac Mini i then run scheduled backups to a local external harddrive, as well as a local Raspberry Pi running Minio, and nightly to OneDrive. The external harddrive backup uses Timemachine, the raspberry pi backup uses Kopia, and OneDrive is done with Arq. Furthermore, i m…

but WHY? why do you go to such lengths?

When i was a kid, photos came in physical form, both as prints and as negatives. These could be stored in different locations, although most of the time they would be stored in the same location.

These days it's all digital photos, and i think most people agree that some kind of backup is needed. If you primarily use a cloud service, there is probably little risk that your data suddenly vanishes (though it has happened), but instead you're faced with the danger of losing access to that account, meaning your stuff might still exist, you just no longer have access to it.

My "normal" backup routing is simply "iCloud -> Mac Mini -> external harddrive + OneDrive", and the Raspberry Pi and Kopia is a (long running) test to eventually replace time machine.

As for the M-disc archive, it's a convenient and low cost way of creating resilient backups of my photos that doesn't require me to print everything. The archive will survive a lot more hardship than your average digital media, and does not require somewhat frequent usage to retain information. Harddrives lose their charge after 5-7 years of sitting unused, SSDs in as little as 2 years. Blu-Ray media will retain information for decades, and (according to the sales brochure) M-disc will retain information for a millenium, which i assume is about 900+ years longer than i need it to.

In theory, i could simply ditch the remote backup and rely on the M-disc media, but that's where convenience comes into play.

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#274

I'm aparently boring. My "backup routine" consists of storing photos in iCloud, which is then syncronized "real time" to a local Mac Mini. From the Mac Mini i then run scheduled backups to a local external harddrive, as well as a local Raspberry Pi running Minio, and nightly to OneDrive. The external harddrive backup uses Timemachine, the raspberry pi backup uses Kopia, and OneDrive is done with Arq. Furthermore, i m…

but WHY? why do you go to such lengths?

sounds like a reasonable backup and archiving process which will compensate for both, the internet and the home burning down

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#275

I'm aparently boring. My "backup routine" consists of storing photos in iCloud, which is then syncronized "real time" to a local Mac Mini. From the Mac Mini i then run scheduled backups to a local external harddrive, as well as a local Raspberry Pi running Minio, and nightly to OneDrive. The external harddrive backup uses Timemachine, the raspberry pi backup uses Kopia, and OneDrive is done with Arq. Furthermore, i m…

You must really love those photos.

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#276
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but WHY? why do you go to such lengths?

You will find, in time, that nobody has an actual answer to this. It's purely nerd-lust for not doing things the simple way

My photo library contains a large part of the moments of my life worth remembering, from being a kid, teenager, young adult, meeting my wife, our kids , pets, and everything between. I would seriously hate to lose it because somebody knocks over a can of soda.

There are two major threats to my photo library. One is loss of the cloud data and/or loss of access to it (and/or malware, natural disasters, etc), which is why i keep data locally as well. The other is loss of data locally, anything from a failed piece of equipment to a house fire.

The reason why i make a local backup of the synchronized cloud data is in case malware decides to encrypt/delete all my photos, in which case iCloud will happily synchronize all the changes to all devices, effectively deleting all good copies.

So with a local backup of the data i've mitigated the first threat, loss of cloud data and/or access to it, but i'm still left with the threat of losing data at home, which is why i also backup to a different cloud provider, which again comes with a threat of losing access, and this is where the Blu-Ray archive comes in.

Because burning Blu-Ray discs is time consuming, i rely on my "day to day" 3-2-1 backup to keep data safe, but ultimately the Blu-Ray discs safeguards against loss of cloud data and loss of local data (identical copies stored in different locations), so they're my last ditch defense of disaster recovery.

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#277
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you are taking a couple of pictures a day, you only need to run this service for a couple of minutes per day, the rest is wasted. You can configure your server to sleep (scheduled or use WoL), which will halve (or more) that carbon emission number. Speaking of which, individual action will never approach the level that corporate action could. Take a look at the practice of gas flaring (2022 estimate of ~357 milli…

I don't understand how or why this defeatist, nihilistic attitude is growing in popularity. Do people just lack the self awareness to realize their inaction is tantamount to malice?

It's not defeatist or nihilist, it's understanding that policy and law (or an individual CEO's or politician's choice) has orders of magnitude more impact that individual actions.

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I appreciate the intent of this project, but it is not a sustainable approach. Self-hosting anything isn't sustainable. Even your modem or router isn't sustainable. But having additional backups and privacy is worth something for me. However since I'm in Europe, electricity prices here are through the roof and I try to minimize power where possible. I self host Immich on my Intel Celeron J1800 NAS that uses 19.1Wh…

What you are saying makes sense. If you are running other valuable apps, then it isn't a waste. I am curious though, how did you come to 1.75kg per user? I calculated 20.9kg / user / year. 250/1000/1000 kgCO₂eq/Wh x 19.1 Wh x 8760 hours in a year / 2 users = 20.9 kg / user / year

> What you are saying makes sense. If you are running other valuable apps, then it isn't a waste.

'Valuable' is pretty subjective though. Most of the services are for entertainment purposes. But I also host quite a few useful things such as Bitwarden and CouchDB for Obsidian Sync.

> I calculated 20.9kg / user / year.

You are right. I forgot the 24 hours in my calculation:

    (0,0191 * 250 * 365,25 * 24) / 1000
I also noticed that my comment was incorrectly formatted. I've since edited my original comment. If I factor in my complete homelab I use about 40Wh, which corresponds with about 90kg of CO₂ yearly. Which doesn't sound all that bad to me.

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#279
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you are taking a couple of pictures a day, you only need to run this service for a couple of minutes per day, the rest is wasted. You can configure your server to sleep (scheduled or use WoL), which will halve (or more) that carbon emission number. Speaking of which, individual action will never approach the level that corporate action could. Take a look at the practice of gas flaring (2022 estimate of ~357 milli…

I don't understand how or why this defeatist, nihilistic attitude is growing in popularity. Do people just lack the self awareness to realize their inaction is tantamount to malice?

So you support Bill Gates creating an uncountable amount of CO2 with his inefficient OS (not to mention ewaste from CPU limiting), but a single individual running their server for a few hours longer than you like is “tantamount to malice”? Do you even care about Earth, or do you just care about reciting capitalist talking points?

Re: Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

#280
post #263

I hope I don't come across as entitled or an asshole, but Docker means I'm not getting near it. Would love to see a bare host installation option for us BSD folks so I can stick it in a jail. Looks real good though! I'll be checking in now and then to see if that happens.

Docker is way too pervasive. It’s a great option, but it shouldn’t be the only option.
Post reply on HN