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Unlimited is like a Ponzi Scheme

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Re: Unlimited is like a Ponzi Scheme

#141

Post by foolmeonce »

giantg2 wrote: post #140
foolmeonce wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia's definition is great but is naturally focused on the social details rather than its nature as an inherently devolving system of resource management. Still it's coverage of how they fall apart is good AFA the system problems. I suppose I should update more wikipedia entries, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_tree References an early example of such a problem article: "Binary Tree". An outrag…

Nice strawman argument. The word "binary" is a modifier of the word "tree". Anyone with a basic understanding of English knows that a binary tree is different from an oak tree. The modifier in "ponzi scheme" is "ponzi". The very definition stated that it is a scheme related to financial investment and returns, which doesn't fit the situation in the article. If you compare the binary tree and ponzi scheme examples, yo…

The ponzi scheme was not a scheme to defraud investors it was a scheme to profit from mail regulations that ultimately defrauded investors since there were few consumers of the actual postage stamps. As such the fuller name of what seems to offend you is an intentional ponzi scheme-like fraud. The important modifier would be like, as in simile. Binary tree does not use simile so it is apparently more strongly a tree than something tree-like.

The ponzi scheme was very similar to offering unlimited plans despite most users having very little interest in storing much or having the constant but moderate usage pattern that would need to accompany that for it to run on ads. AFA schemes both are marketing gimmicks misrepresenting the market to sell an unlikely profit system as viable, and when it collapses the people sold the system's superiority to reasonable offers end up upset. Both of these gimmicks can be done intentionally or accidentally as described in the wiki entry.

Unlimited plans are in fact very similar to THE ponzi scheme, more so than an intentional ponzi-scheme-like fraud. Many even argue that the ponzi scheme is not a good representative of ponzi scheme frauds, rather many are based on fraudsters understanding the original ponzi scheme (ponzi himself probably did not initially understand he was getting into fraud of investors until the scheme already had investors.)

At any rate, you seem to understand that there's a lot of room for discussion on how unlimited media is like the ponzi scheme itself or a ponzi scheme fraud. Semantic arguments over who is defrauded and who expects what are pretty pointless as in modern finance the users and investors are all in the mix that is the public and is being uniformly addressed by the company whether in casual media or SEC filings.

Re: Unlimited is like a Ponzi Scheme

#142

Post by lizknope »

pnutjam wrote: post #59
gravitas wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The organization and data which is in that takeout is a complete mess of years of design changes from picasa -> photos, empty folders, duplicate date folders, hidden old crap from your Google+ account (like banner pics) which you can't see anymore to delete, just stuff everywhere inside those zip files. $0.02 if you ever have to actually deal with them, add time to first normalize what you unzip.

zip files suck for jpg, it's already compressed. If you're storing raw formats, it might help some.

I agree but I use zip as a handy container format. Assuming I have 50 image files I use the -0 option for no compression. It runs a lot quicker and it is easier to send/upload/download 1 file than 50 individual files.

zip -r -0 file.zip dir

Re: Unlimited is like a Ponzi Scheme

#143

Post by brianwski »

rsync wrote: post #108
sleavey wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my findings, the reason unlimited doesn't work is a small percentage of users (very small, like ~0.1%) who push it to the extreme. In other words, if your exhaust 50% of your resources to service 0.1% of your users, at a fixed subscription cost, the model doesn't work. How do you handle such users at MediaFire?

"How do you handle such users at MediaFire?" You silently and/or passive aggressively throttle the whales in such a way that they go away. I learned this a long time ago (1998) while consulting for a very large and successful early web host (Simplenet). They allowed unlimited bandwidth and one of my first questions was "how do you make that work?". They mercilessly throttled the top 1-2% of users until they just went…

> You silently and/or passive aggressively throttle the whales in such a way that they go away.

Carbonite is an online backup provider that got caught doing this by the U.K. government in 2012: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonite,_Inc.#Misleading_adv...

Re: Unlimited is like a Ponzi Scheme

#144

Post by skylanh »

bayindirh wrote: post #49
oefrha wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long suspected that r/DataHoarder is why we can't have nice things, i.e. cheap online data storage that is slightly subsidized by the average user who only stores a little. Thanks for confirming from the point of view of a major storage provider.

I follow r/Datahoarder for best practices and methods for getting my own stuff (like HumbleBundle or purchased eBook libraries) to my own local storage but, some of them really abuse online storage providers. I cringe sometimes reading all the posts. Why on the world someone try to mirror nearly everything to somewhere like Scrat from the Ice Age?

I use some of the techniques as offsite "well, maybe it's with that cloud storage?" disaster recovery backup options.

I have used Backblaze, and was storing 16TB there, and that was $50/month.

I did a simple envelope calculation, decided I could either hand-roll a offsite system with 2x consumer harddrives, or look for other options.

I have 28TB backed up with another provider now.

Why haven't I tried either AWS or Azure cold-tier storage?

I have maybe 2 hours a month where I can spend looking into solutions to my offsite backup situation, and I am somewhat concerned that I could mess up the AWS solution and cost myself thousands of dollars. This coupled with a lack of time, significant competing concerns (keeping a job during a global pandemic job market; work-load; personal life), and "eh, I'll get to it"-laziness, means I have to put this on the back burner.

If you handed me a simple solution using rclone, zfs send, btrfs-send, or a pre-canned "this is what it would cost" Bacula approach, I would move to it.

Re: Unlimited is like a Ponzi Scheme

#145

Post by doctoroctogon »

ValentineC wrote: post #95
2ion wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Microsoft OneDrive to instantly upload my photos to the Camera Roll, and then I use a rclone daemon to move the images to 2 backup locations (after applying encryption). I tried the way of uploading directly to my target backup locations from my phone using RCX (rclone for Android), but uploading camera roll at convenient times, automatic retry, and features like automatic albums and such are nice to have and h…

I second rclone. It's rock-solid (at least until Google changes their Photos API), and should be fine to automate via cron: https://rclone.org/googlephotos/

plus one

Re: Unlimited is like a Ponzi Scheme

#146

Post by aij »

est31 wrote: post #25
redm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing you can do other than move away from unlimited storage. The model, as the OP states, works well initially, however over time, "power users" emerge to want to make use of unlimited. The only choice is to remove unlimited storage as a fixed subscription fee. You may have metered billing (unlimited storage but you are charged per GB) or to do away with unlimited storage all together. Keep in mind, that c…

Marketing wise, it's better for the business to market with "unlimited" than creating a limit, even if it won't affect 90% of the users. For users, it creates a different feeling of freedom, even if you never use that freedom.

Of course it's better marketing wise to market your products/offerings/capabilities as better than they actually are. Even if 90% of users don't notice the difference, it really shouldn't be surprising that some small fraction of users will notice and will be unhappy.
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