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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

#651

Post by voakbasda »

layer8 wrote: post #431
voakbasda wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With modern connected devices, I absolutely do expect for features (or even total functionality) to be removed on a whim by the manufacturer. Cloud services are no different. Lesson being: do not rely on devices or services that rely on a third party. They absolutely will screw you; it’s only a matter of time. If you do not believe this, then I would say that you have not been around this industry long enough. There…

You may be factually correct, but as a paying customer, this is not acceptable.

Of course it is not acceptable. But I imagine every company out there that has skin in this game would boldly taunt in reply: “whachha gunna do ‘bout it?”

Sure, we could boycott. How often is that ever effective in this modern age? Is it ever, because I don’t think I ever heard of such outside of history books?

Our lawmakers are corrupt and wholly in the pocket of those who would stand to benefit from perpetuating this shameful status quo. From my perspective, there ain’t damn thing we can do to fix it (or a thousand other problems), unless we are ready to start holding them accountable. I think that will take putting some of their heads on pikes.

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

#652

Post by toastercat »

lupusreal wrote: post #590
toastercat wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average non-tech savvy person doesn't really have an option than to get screwed over then. Assuming you have an Android phone, it's practically required to have a Google account; many apps just flat out do not work without Google Play Services or without signing in with your Gmail account. Yes, I know about microG, Graphene, F-Droid and the like, but the average person is not going to flash their phone. They will…

You can use apps from F-Droid without flashing your phone. The only apps I have from the playstore are apps for a few financial institutions, otherwise it's all F-Droid. And you don't need to be hackerman to do this, I told my retired parents "you should check out F-Droid" and they did. Now they recommend F-Droid apps to me.

But you and I (and perhaps your retired parents) are the exception. Most people want to have their bank app on their phone. They can't get that on F-Droid, so they go to Google Play Store.

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

#653

Post by pdonis »

toastercat wrote: post #652
lupusreal wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use apps from F-Droid without flashing your phone. The only apps I have from the playstore are apps for a few financial institutions, otherwise it's all F-Droid. And you don't need to be hackerman to do this, I told my retired parents "you should check out F-Droid" and they did. Now they recommend F-Droid apps to me.

But you and I (and perhaps your retired parents) are the exception. Most people want to have their bank app on their phone. They can't get that on F-Droid, so they go to Google Play Store.

Last I checked a bank is a financial institution, which the GP said they still get from Google Play. But that doesn't mean you have to get all your apps from Google Play, which was the GP's point.

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

#654

Post by amerkhalid »

kortilla wrote: post #645
amerkhalid wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sure they will survive but it would be huge loss and emotional shock. It is like saying losing electricity forever should not be catastrophic event, people were living happily without it for 1000s of years.

Electricity makes significant differences to quality of life and you’re talking about having 100 pictures of your kids instead of 10,000 being “a huge loss and emotional shock”. That’s frankly pathetic. There are many people I know alive today (including myself) that don’t obsess over a day by day photo chronology of their children that you will probably never look at 90% of. Yet we all use electricity significantly…

> Describe how 10,000 photos of your child is on par with access to electricity?

It is not. Electricity is just an example, probably a bad one. I would take it over photos any day.

But I am sure there are some modern conveniences that are really important to you while for others they are not as important. If you lose access to those conveniences, you will feel greatly emotional whether anger, sadness or some other emotion. And most people will sympathize with you and a few people will think that it is pathetic to obsess over whatever it is. And they will repeat same old cliche, "back in the days".

Just because it is not important to you, it does not mean it is "pathetic" if it is important to someone else.

I used to work in consumer-facing tech support shop where we mostly troubleshoot computers. I saw too many people crying in public because they lost all their data including photos of their kids. And only thing they cared about was for us to recover the photos. And if we recovered photos even if only a few, people would cry with joy. They brought us cakes, cookies, and other things as gifts. And if we failed, some people had almost mental breakdown.

Based on while probably small sample size, I do think feeling distress over loss of photos would be a normal reaction for majority of humans.

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

#655

Post by rkagerer »

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.

Sounds like a cat and mouse game - hasn't someone tweaked an encryption algorithm yet to produce a less even distribution?

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

#656

Post by licomo »

fennecfoxy wrote: post #642
licomo wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why do you think CF owe you an explanation of when you start paying? You're not paying them; they don't owe you anything. I imagine it pretty much comes down to "did this one thing that an individual is free hosting suddenly become popular or are they constantly taking the piss/running a biz off free".

CF has a free plan and paid plans. There's a fuzzy line in between. I would like to know when I would be transitioned to a paid plan.

They have an internal metric - I just wish it was public. How can I make a business decision on cost without this?

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

#657

Post by chlorion »

cxr wrote: post #589
chlorion wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this email Recently we announced that Google Podcasts will be discontinued next year. We wanted to reach out directly with more information on what to expect. For now, nothing is changing, and you can continue to use Google Podcasts as normal. Over the coming months, podcasts in YouTube Music will be made available globally and we will start rolling out tools that will enable you to transfer your podcast show…

> I was trying to say[...] Oh yeah? That's a weird thing to write instead of just saying, "I admit that I wasn't telling the truth." PS: Even with your moving the goalposts, September to April still isn't "well over a year".

I fact checked both of us and the timelime is Sept 2023 to July 2024, so you are correct that it's not over a year.

>September to April

You seem to be not telling the truth, perhaps you should admit that yourself.

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

#658

Post by godelski »

compsciphd wrote: post #643
godelski wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sadly in this case can't be used for saying "where google says". I think we're looking at very different things.... there's a screenshot of a literal official email from Google, under the Google Workspace Team. Not sure where you're getting "Google product experts". Did you mean to reply to a different comment?

aren't we referring to the ancestor comment of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38629510 if you're referring to something else, I missed that reference, so my apologies then. I do think google gave sufficient time to move off. I also don't think a "workspace" being in read only mode was ever meant to be a permanent position for that google workspace. i.e. it was meant that "we weren't going to suddenly delete you…

I apologize, I forgot that was in a comment above. Personally I'm not concerned with what the product experts said but rather the official from Google emails I'm talking about are in the screenshot of the article where it doesn't say anything about removing or deleting data. I'm also not concerned if you have to click links for more information or Google to figure out Google's policy. What matters is what's in the direct email.

> i.e. it was meant that "...its your responsibility to get under quota or your account will be at risk".

In person to person language I think we can rely on inference because there's good feedback mechanisms to resolve (like was done here). But in corporate communication I don't think you have the same luxury. Especially when you're a corporation that has no person to talk to to resolve misunderstandings. Instructions must be explicit and to such a degree that no reasonable person could misinterpret. It's why they hire all those lawyers and that's what a court of law would hold them to. I think given the emails shown that there's reason to believe his data would not be deleted until the explicit 7 day notice.

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

#659

Post by layer8 »

voakbasda wrote: post #651
layer8 wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be factually correct, but as a paying customer, this is not acceptable.

Of course it is not acceptable. But I imagine every company out there that has skin in this game would boldly taunt in reply: “whachha gunna do ‘bout it?” Sure, we could boycott. How often is that ever effective in this modern age? Is it ever, because I don’t think I ever heard of such outside of history books? Our lawmakers are corrupt and wholly in the pocket of those who would stand to benefit from perpetuating th…

Well, I’m in Europe, the situation is better here. It certainly is a matter of cultural norms.

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

#660

Post by capitainenemo »

shwouchk wrote: post #565
capitainenemo wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... they could transition the data to tape with a delay for recovering it, instead of outright deleting it. At that point, storing it would be pretty much free no? Regardless, they promised something, then reneged, with little to no time to handle it. The way they handled it in terms of getting rid of the service is pretty terrible. Also apparently it wasn't his only copy - his others were taken, and now he's abo…

As I and others mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, there was at least a year of warning. At least I was aware of this for about a year out. Tape is cheaper but not free. A quick search[0] quotes it at ~few $ /TB/Yr. Even if we take it at $1 due to G scale, that’s still ~$250/Y to store the archives, roughly what the customer likely paid when it was stored on immediate access media. I agree it would have been nic…

From reading the thread, he got a year of warning about read only, which was fine by him, but far far less on the deletion.

I'm getting my information from here though. If you don't mind linking to the relevant part about him getting a year's warning about deletion...

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