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Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

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Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

#291

Post by xethos »

RajT88 wrote: post #155
andrewmutz wrote: post #51

The actual headline is slightly less inflammatory: "Google Promises Unlimited Cloud Storage; Then Cancels Plan; Then Tells Journalist His Life’s Work Will Be Deleted Without Enough Time To Transfer The Data" The facts of the article are even less inflammatory. The journalist uploaded 237.22 TB of video to his google drive when the "unlimited" plan existed. When google phased out the unlimited plan, he's not paying fo…

For 5k you could build a box to store that kind of data. Throw in a case of beer, and maid services to clean up your living room afterward, and you'd still make budget. ETA: OK maybe more like 10-12k it would be.

As noted in the article,

> "Earlier this year, the FBI raided his house and seized all of his electronic devices after he had obtained and published some leaked video footage from Fox News. As we noted, this seemed like a pretty big 1st Amendment issue. Burke is also facing bogus CFAA charges because he was able to access the footage by using publicly accessible URLs to obtain the content."

Even if Burke had built a box, the maid service and beer would be the most helpful (but would not solve his actual issue).

Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

#292

Post by boringg »

Pikamander2 wrote: post #224
boringg wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean 237 TB of data is an excessive amount of data. The 'victim' here clearly knows they are taking advantage of a situation. Google is in the wrong on their response but, come on, let's be reasonable human beings and stop saying 'victim blaming'.

> I mean 237 TB of data is an excessive amount of data. If it's excessive, then Google shouldn't have offered an unlimited data plan. They could have called it a 100 TB plan, but they chose to call it unlimited to make it sound better and then canceled it once people took them up on the offer. Regardless of whether that kind of action is legal, it's a shady business practice. For that matter, there's nothing wrong wi…

They offered it for 10 years and then probably realized that people were taking advantage of the position and then tried to phase it out. Most likely with a lot of warning beforehand.

I have a tough time believe that they didn't give any warning and then kicked them off the service.

Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

#293

Post by ajb »

codedokode wrote: post #212
rkagerer wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? How can they tell the difference between an encrypted file vs. some binary format they simply don't understand?

Let me share a Chinese Firewall (according to rumours) algorithm for detecting cryptography: count number of 0 and 1 bits. If the number is almost equal, it is likely encrypted content.

That also applies to any good compression though.

Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

#294

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

jeremyjh wrote: post #114
hedora wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also banned encrypted files, effectively kicking off everyone using it for backup. I assume this means they look at your photos and other data.

Probably it means they want to compress and dedupe and you cannot compress data after it has been encrypted.

Wait what? I'm a confessed ignoramus but this does not make sense to me. Encrypted data is bits and bytes like everything else. You can compress it. (Maybe not as well as unencrypted text, but still.)

Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

#295

Post by freedomben »

hedora wrote: post #100
oefrha wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon Cloud Drive used to be “unlimited”. They rescinded that offer and deleted people’s data way before Google. Before Microsoft’s OneDrive too IIRC. Out of the big three, Google Drive had an insanely good run as unlimited. (Even non-enterprise business plans with caps in theory were unlimited in practice until this year.) - Former ACD customer who got burned.

They also banned encrypted files, effectively kicking off everyone using it for backup. I assume this means they look at your photos and other data.

Amazon did? (ban encrypted files). I'm guessing so, just want to make sure.

I used to use Amazon stuff but it has really become such insane spyware. There is no data collection/analytics that goes too far for Amazon. It's really appalling, no less so that they use their near monopoly on using Kindles to deeply mine for data on exactly what people are reading, how long on each page, etc. Really gross.

Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

#296

Post by RajT88 »

rst wrote: post #242
RajT88 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For 5k you could build a box to store that kind of data. Throw in a case of beer, and maid services to clean up your living room afterward, and you'd still make budget. ETA: OK maybe more like 10-12k it would be.

The guy's boxes were confiscated by the FBI, which was why he'd been forced onto cloud storage.

Sure. Make me read the article. lol

Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

#297

Post by bcrosby95 »

pdonis wrote: post #183
tedivm wrote: post #24

People really need to understand that Google is a garbage company that can't be relied on for anything. I've spent years as a consultant, and several more in the startup world, and I'd rather host all my content in us-east-1 than rely on google. * I've had customers get their cloud accounts shut down for a literal three cent billing error, * I've seen people who use Google for advertising pay thousands of dollars and…

> People really need to understand that Google is a garbage company that can't be relied on for anything. Normally the response to this is, yes, it sucks, but you're not paying Google to host your data. However, it looks like this journalist did pay Google to host his data. So this immediately puts it in a worse category.

It's always been a garage argument. If someone is offering free food, and it gives you food poisoning, on purpose, you don't say "well it was free".

Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

#298

Post by profunctor »

codedokode wrote: post #203
tedivm wrote: post #24

People really need to understand that Google is a garbage company that can't be relied on for anything. I've spent years as a consultant, and several more in the startup world, and I'd rather host all my content in us-east-1 than rely on google. * I've had customers get their cloud accounts shut down for a literal three cent billing error, * I've seen people who use Google for advertising pay thousands of dollars and…

> company that can't be relied on for anything Any cloud service can't be relied on for anything. There is no law for mandatory backing up cloud content and no guarantees your data will not be lost. Buy HDDs while they still are available and do the back up yourself.

Aren’t the guarantees the SLA that is agreed with Amazon, Google etc?

Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

#299

Post by ExoticPearTree »

tedivm wrote: post #24

People really need to understand that Google is a garbage company that can't be relied on for anything. I've spent years as a consultant, and several more in the startup world, and I'd rather host all my content in us-east-1 than rely on google. * I've had customers get their cloud accounts shut down for a literal three cent billing error, * I've seen people who use Google for advertising pay thousands of dollars and…

Just to be put the record straight: Google is an advertising company with hobbies.

And like for many of us hobbies change over time, so do Google's hobbies.

There's somewhere a website with all the products killed by Google for various reasons, some even after a few months.

Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

#300

Post by freedomben »

ajb wrote: post #293
codedokode wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me share a Chinese Firewall (according to rumours) algorithm for detecting cryptography: count number of 0 and 1 bits. If the number is almost equal, it is likely encrypted content.

That also applies to any good compression though.

True, but since very, very few files are compressed with unique or unknown compression algorithms, you can read the metadata in the file and see if it's really compressed or if the whole thing is just seemingly random.

That gives me an idea. Might be fun to write a tool that will encrypt a file but make it look like a valid .zip file that just unpacks to meaningless noise. There's gotta be something like that already out there... Although you could recursively unpack/evaluate and eventually you should get to the point where it's non-random data. If you never do, then it's encrypted.

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