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Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

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Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#101

Post by pettersolberg »

warp_factor wrote: post #73
mcbits wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen a few stories of businesses and their employees all losing their Google accounts, just because the company hired a freelancer who had previously been banned, and Google detected the association. (Pretty sure they got the accounts back after some public outrage.) I wouldn't risk intentionally violating their terms if you're not quite ready to wake up one day 100% Google-free, or very good at hiding your trac…

The fact that this is even a remote possibility should worry everyone of the ugly monopoly that Google became. I found myself in a similar situation a couple months ago. An android App falsely charged me on the Play store. After trying to contact Google for multiple weeks I gave up and disputed the charge on my credit card. This resulted in Google coming after me for 8.99$ and threatening me to close all my Google ac…

Surely, Google has way too much power, but as the old adage goes: don't put all your eggs into one basket :)

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#102

Post by DonHopkins »

lathiat wrote: post #42
yunyu wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is an implementation of arbitrary data storage using YouTube videos: https://github.com/dzhang314/YouTubeDrive

I love that this exists

I want to watch some! Got any urls?

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#103

Post by derriz »

simonh wrote: post #77
SergeAx wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long before base64 there was UUencode, but it was quite sensitive to whitespaces and mail client reflowing, so it didn't make it to the RFC standards.

Yep and the Shar command that created a bash wrapper round sections of uuencoded data, so you could email a file in segments and conveniently recompose and run it to get the file back, without needing Shar at the other end. Good times.

That brings back memories. Of using an email gateway to get an Amiga fred fish disk - delivered as shar pieces to my uni email account (only staff had telnet, ftp, etc. access). Then assembling the pieces in /tmp on the departmental unix server. Then switching to a PC to use Kermit to get the contents onto a PC floppy. Then using an Amiga utility to be able to read PC format disks to copy them to an Amiga floppy.

I've no memeory of what motivated me to spend so much time just to be able to view some low-res, low-fps 3 second video clip, listen to 8-bit tracker "tunes" and try out some free application that invariably crashed the machine after a minute or two of use.

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#104

Post by blackflame7000 »

DonHopkins wrote: post #61
marquis-chacha wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be at the mercy of them potentially changing their encoding scheme unannounced and corrupting your files.

Back in the day of email gateways between different networks, there used to be a terrible problems with all the tin-pot dictator IBM SYSADMINs at BITNET sites who maintained their own personal styles of ASCII EBCDIC translation tables, so all the email that passed through their servers got corrupted. EBCDIC based IBM mainframe SYSADMINs on BITNET were particularly notorious for being pig-headed and inconsiderate abou…

I always wondered what the purpose of trigraphs were other than to help win obfuscated code contests haha

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#105

Post by blackflame7000 »

markbnj wrote: post #58

Very neat, but it seems to me the issue with all wink-wink schemes like this is that you're ultimately getting something that wasn't explicitly promised, and so might be taken away at any time. So while interesting you couldn't really ever feel secure storing anything that mattered this way.

Yea but you could store unlimited backups across multiple accounts. (Not advocating this however)

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#106

Post by tjbiddle »

warp_factor wrote: post #73
mcbits wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen a few stories of businesses and their employees all losing their Google accounts, just because the company hired a freelancer who had previously been banned, and Google detected the association. (Pretty sure they got the accounts back after some public outrage.) I wouldn't risk intentionally violating their terms if you're not quite ready to wake up one day 100% Google-free, or very good at hiding your trac…

The fact that this is even a remote possibility should worry everyone of the ugly monopoly that Google became. I found myself in a similar situation a couple months ago. An android App falsely charged me on the Play store. After trying to contact Google for multiple weeks I gave up and disputed the charge on my credit card. This resulted in Google coming after me for 8.99$ and threatening me to close all my Google ac…

Yeesh. I had the same happen - Except I never followed through on reversing the charge on my credit card. I spent multiple hours trying to dispute $2.99 or something. Clearly not for the monetary value - just from pure frustration!

However, I was scared for my Google account so just ended up dropping it. Ridiculous.

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#108

Post by aasasd »

DonHopkins wrote: post #76

In 1998, the EFF and John Gilmore published the book about "Deep Crack" called "Cracking DES: Secrets of Encryption Research, Wiretap Politics, and Chip Design". But at the time, it would have been illegal to publish the code on a web site, or include a CDROM with the book publishing the "Deep Crack" DES cracker source code and VHDL in digital form. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFF_DES_cracker https://www.foo.be/doc…

Afaik Phil Zimmermann was one of the first to do it, in '95 through MIT Press—when his PGP circulated a bit too widely for the export regulations. However, the question of him being protected under the 1st wasn't decided in the court.

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#109

Post by Outpox »

londons_explore wrote: post #68
sircastor wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that depends on their tools and how they evaluate data usage. If the reporting states that the accounts are using very little storage because it's using the same measuring stick that the client does them it's invisible. The question comes up during an audit of the system when the disk usage doesn't match the report. Then again, if this is used by few people it may just look like a margin of error.

It'll more be that the Google docs "live editing" backends are expensive to use disk and memory wise. They store complete version history with each keystroke of a document. There's a good chance a megabyte of "document" costs Google a gigabyte of internal storage...

> They store complete version history with each keystroke of a document.

I would expect them to only store a diff between each version instead of storing the whole thing. Couldn't find much about this after a quick search.

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#110

Post by askl »

userbinator wrote: post #21

Base85 would probably be a better choice for storing binary as text, since it has a ratio of 5:4 instead of 4:3. On the topic of "unusual and free large file hosting", YouTube would probably be the largest, although you'd need to find a resilient way of encoding the data since their re-encoding processes are lossy. I like the "Linux ISO" and "1337 Docs" references ;-)

Or you could use BandcampFS https://github.com/tuxxy/BandcampFS https://bullswillriot.bandcamp.com/album/arch-linux-07-01
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