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I only use Google Sheets

mayberay.bearblog.dev

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Re: I only use Google Sheets

#31

Post by Aachen »

TrackerFF wrote: post #22

One thing I've learned: Never ( ever ) make yourself reliant/dependent on Google products. If you do get banned / locked out, it is the most AI-Kafkaesque process imaginable to regain access. And you could stay locked out for years. I use Google sheets myself from time to time, but I regularly do backups of the sheets I'm working on, or anything important I have access to. I've been in the hole before, for reasons I…

I keep telling people to make backups of "cloud" services ever since Grooveshark died from one day to the next

Maybe Spotify won't be taken down overnight, but they can lock me out for various reasons such as misdetecting an IP address (Google wouldn't let me log in at all when they thought I was in Russia, when I was at 31C3 in Hamburg, Germany, a conference where they afaik use some temporary IP space — I don't know what consequences that would have nowadays)

Hacker News also: if there are things here you want to keep, store them yourself

Facebook chats, Signal, etc.: download the data in a format you can decode if there's anything you want to keep. Make sure you can decode this Signal backup format if your phone dies

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#33

Post by jeroenhd »

salviati wrote: post #3

Reminds me of "Ask HN: Is the world run by badly updated Excel sheets?" [0] You need experience to see the shorcomings of spreadsheets. No version control. No tests. In general it's good for things that don't need to evolve, but stay the same (most likely because they're short lived). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33611431 [EDIT] An example of a comment from that thread pointing in this direction: > In gen…

> No version control

You can use version control with Excel spreadsheets, though it's not very good. It's called "track changes" and even has a limited capacity to approve/reject changes from other people.

Very few people uses that feature, especially not the people who have built a Rube Goldberg machine to run their business processes, but you could do it if you wanted to.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#34

Post by sjw987 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #22

One thing I've learned: Never ( ever ) make yourself reliant/dependent on Google products. If you do get banned / locked out, it is the most AI-Kafkaesque process imaginable to regain access. And you could stay locked out for years. I use Google sheets myself from time to time, but I regularly do backups of the sheets I'm working on, or anything important I have access to. I've been in the hole before, for reasons I…

I can't tell whether I'm being super paranoid but I've been burned by Google so many times on product sunsets that I've just removed all of my data from them.

I managed to set up private self-hosted versions of an email client, photo viewing app, and barebones alternative to Docs and Sheets. Switched from Google to Kagi, and Chrome to Brave, but generally keep my own bookmarks of sites to use rather than using search engines.

I still run a skeleton Pixel, but the storage is almost exclusively just a very limited range of apps I use. I managed to get Google One storage from about 700GB to about 700Mb over the course of the last month or so.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#35

Post by AJ007 »

PunchTornado wrote: post #28
TrackerFF wrote: post #22

One thing I've learned: Never ( ever ) make yourself reliant/dependent on Google products. If you do get banned / locked out, it is the most AI-Kafkaesque process imaginable to regain access. And you could stay locked out for years. I use Google sheets myself from time to time, but I regularly do backups of the sheets I'm working on, or anything important I have access to. I've been in the hole before, for reasons I…

try being banned by msft. I am still banned for 6 years without doing anything wrong. still lost access to all of my accounts.

A good reason why no one should ever have their Windows install linked to a Microsoft account, same for MacOS.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#37

Post by throwaway290 »

AJ007 wrote: post #35
PunchTornado wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

try being banned by msft. I am still banned for 6 years without doing anything wrong. still lost access to all of my accounts.

A good reason why no one should ever have their Windows install linked to a Microsoft account, same for MacOS.

Who ever lost apple account by being banned? with no recourse? I don't remember a story like that

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#38

Post by hn-ifs »

I suppose the issue here is trusting Google with your personal and business data. Mining that information for targeting advertising aside, it's not unheard of Google locking people out of their accounts with no reasons or obvious recourse.

I wonder what the best non-mega corp solution there is for this.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#39

Post by coffeefirst »

sjw987 wrote: post #34
TrackerFF wrote: post #22

One thing I've learned: Never ( ever ) make yourself reliant/dependent on Google products. If you do get banned / locked out, it is the most AI-Kafkaesque process imaginable to regain access. And you could stay locked out for years. I use Google sheets myself from time to time, but I regularly do backups of the sheets I'm working on, or anything important I have access to. I've been in the hole before, for reasons I…

I can't tell whether I'm being super paranoid but I've been burned by Google so many times on product sunsets that I've just removed all of my data from them. I managed to set up private self-hosted versions of an email client, photo viewing app, and barebones alternative to Docs and Sheets. Switched from Google to Kagi, and Chrome to Brave, but generally keep my own bookmarks of sites to use rather than using search…

What’s your Docs and Sheets alternative?

I’ve looked, I’ve never found anything that seems to both cover all the bases and not feel like a bad Microsoft clone.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#40

Post by hn-ifs »

throwaway290 wrote: post #37
AJ007 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good reason why no one should ever have their Windows install linked to a Microsoft account, same for MacOS.

Who ever lost apple account by being banned? with no recourse? I don't remember a story like that

Can't of happened then if you don't remember a story like it...
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