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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

#571

Post by chlorion »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #460
chlorion wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> There is no way this person wasn't aware of what was going to happen, Sure. That's what it is. He's a grifter, grifting Google to try to shame them into giving him a quarter of a petabyte of storage for free. He knew all along that his data would be deleted, and waited to the last second because he figures this is a sure thing and he'll get to keep it forever. You caught him. I can't believe we all fell for it. It'…

Google sends multiple emails that are extremely clear about what is going to happen. If you ignore the emails or notifications, that is your fault, not on the service.

Like I mentioned above, even the Google podcast service is giving users over a year to prepare for the shutdown, and provides a method to transfer any data you have out of the app. If they take much precaution with a podcast app that few people even use, I guarantee they sent multiple emails to this person urging them to prepare for this.

If you don't check your email or just ignore it, that is not the service providers fault. Expecting a free service to bend over backwards for you even when they told you repeatedly to prepare for this is silly.

>I can't believe we all fell for it.

You fell for clickbait and exaggerated or fabricated stories from someone who either ignored their mail or waited til last minute and are now whining.

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

#572

Post by licomo »

pton_xd wrote: post #305
licomo wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OT, but this is why I am skeptical of Cloudflare right now. Am I right to be concerned?

Cloudflare covers this in their terms of service: Content Delivery Network (Free, Pro, or Business) Cloudflare’s content delivery network (the “CDN”) Service can be used to cache and serve web pages and websites. Unless you are an Enterprise customer, Cloudflare offers specific Paid Services (e.g., the Developer Platform, Images, and Stream) that you must use in order to serve video and other large files via the CDN.…

This is the part I don't like

> if you use or are suspected of using the CDN without such Paid Services to serve video or a disproportionate percentage of pictures, audio files, or other large files

Lots of sites have images. When exactly can I start to expect paying? Will this unspoken limit change in the future? Will I be notified when it is? As-written, it doesn't seem that way since it's opaque.

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

#573

Post by justinclift »

lukeschlather wrote: post #520
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no way this person wasn't aware of what was going to happen, Sure. That's what it is. He's a grifter, grifting Google to try to shame them into giving him a quarter of a petabyte of storage for free. He knew all along that his data would be deleted, and waited to the last second because he figures this is a sure thing and he'll get to keep it forever. You caught him. I can't believe we all fell for it. It'…

He had all his computers confiscated by the FBI and then realized that his backups were also being destroyed by Google. Calling this a grift is incredibly insulting.

Did you miss the sarcasm?

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

#574

Post by poopslide »

calfuris wrote: post #498
ajross wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, exactly. "He has 7 days or it would be wiped" is a threat , not a punishment. Was the data wiped or not? What are you willing to bet that we'll actually see a followup claiming the data was wiped? Almost certainly he's going to download the thing onto $3k of SSDs and get off the service, which is what everyone wants.

Moving 237.22 TB in 7 days requires ~3.14 Gbps of bandwidth, assuming that the clock starts ticking the moment that he actually starts moving data. In practice, the requirements would be even higher (subtracting out the time between notice being sent and read, plus time to actually set up alternative storage). Does Google even provide that level of read throughput to Google Drive customers?

[dead]

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

#576

Post by justinclift »

Hmmm. You'd be able to store that qty of data across 2x storage servers on Hetzner.

Grabbing ones already available from Hetzner's "server auction" means they'd be fairly cheap (comparatively) compared to ordering brand new ones.

Something like the ones with 10 x 16TB drives for €260/mo.

Not sure if Hetzner would upgrade the network interface to 10GbE though, as that would be a requirement.

That's just the hardware too. He'd need someone technical enough to set it up for him (and keep it running), and there'd need to be some way to download the data to it from Google.

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

#577

Post by badpun »

deely3 wrote: post #345
badpun wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But they've been entrenched for years now, completely dominate so many aspects of the web and get plenty of value out of even their free users. That's why I store only 1 file on my Google Drive - a 10 GB encrypted blob (TrueCrypt partition).

Why not VeraCrypt, honest question?

I looked into that myself years ago, and honestly can't remember now why I made that decision back then :) Should probably document such stuff somewhere.

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

#578

Post by renewiltord »

azemetre wrote: post #558
renewiltord wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe most companies don't offer unlimited plans anymore these days. And Google probably removed theirs because of use cases like this. Fault isn't what's being assigned. Just that sometimes people offer deals that have no explicit limits except that the deal terms say that either party can exit at any time. Then once the deal moves out of the band where it is mutually beneficial, one party invokes the terms and…

Idk if that’s always the case. I still have unlimited data plan from my mobile provider, from 2008ish. $50 for unlimited data (no it’s not rate limited either). Obviously the cellular provider hates this but they can’t remove something I’m paying for and haven’t broken the contract. They do try to get me off the plan several times a year offering new phones fully paid if I switched. Fuck them, I paid for it and I’m n…

I don't think this "my fault" / their fault is a useful way of thinking for enterprise decisions. For my part, I was and am in charge of cloud (and on-prem) purchasing decisions and I don't like to consider these things binary. Counterparty risk is just an additional cost to consider.

We use Alibaba Cloud, GCP, and most of all AWS. About December last year, Alibaba Cloud had a full zone outage as their datacenter provider had complete air-conditioning failure. One of the first things to go were the switches plugged into Express Connect (their feature to allow you to have direct links to their cloud through your network provider) and we had backup access set. We didn't get all of our stuff shut down but it helped.

But developing and maintaining backup access costs something. When we egress from S3 to our on-prem cluster, that's a cost. Vendor continuity and substitutability is just a cost like that. It's up to the guy managing this to model each of these risks and no enterprise vendor will sign an unlimited liability contract so you're going to have to land somewhere reasonable here. I always make sure to have exit clauses for us, and I try to ensure vendor exit clauses are what I'm comfortable with and appropriately priced.

Ultimately, you'll just have to read what you sign and have good counsel. But that's just what's worked for me. If you find the blacklist model more successful, more power to you.

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

#580

Post by lancewiggs »

frognumber wrote: post #80
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…

> 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" Correct. 7 days is not enough time to stream >200TB of data, let alone find a place to stream it to. This puts a human being in a crisis position. He doesn't need to just find someone willing to store his data.…

I'm told that Movebot can do this in time - getting the archives to s3/wasabi or Backblaze etc.
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