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Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

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Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#271

Post by attila-lendvai »

ben_w wrote: post #219
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to (once again) define “free” pricing models as predatory and broadly outlaw them Free services funded by ads have been a boon for the poor.

That rips off the advertisers and/or leaves the poor poorer. For any given ad supported service, one of two things must be true: (1) the ad spend was more than or equal to the cost of the service for those users (2) the ad spend was less than the cost of the service for those users From fork (2), it follows that the service isn't sustainable anyway. From fork (1), it follows that the buyers of the ad slots in turn on…

or (3), the non-obvious, or non-advertised effects of the service may be valuable enough for powerful people to make the service "profitable" through artificial money flows (e.g. by paying for ads, endless investing, stock price manipulation, etc).

thinking of stuff like facebook here...

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#272

Post by hofo »

apitman wrote: post #252
brendoncarroll wrote: post #114

I work on a FOSS project in this space, Blobcache. https://github.com/blobcache/blobcache Trusting a server to store an application's state is a different thing from trusting it to author changes or to read the data. Servers should become dumber, and clients should become smarter. When I use an app, I want the app to load E2E encrypted state from storage (possibly on another machine, possibly not owned by me) make wh…

> Configuration is like SSH, drop a key in a configuration file to grant access. It removes most of the friction associated with consuming and producing storage as a resource. What's the story for people who don't know what an SSH hey is?

They either exercise intellectual curiosity through Google and YouTube, or they wait until someone decides it’s worth making a commercial offering.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#273

Post by addaon »

me-vs-cat wrote: post #254
ineptech wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The realistic path off looks like this, I think: * I use Bluesky to chat as a Twitter replacement, which gets me into the Fediverse and gets me a PDS * I use my PDS to store my payment details, giving me a (at first client-side) way to submit stored payment details that feels similar to storing it in the browser, but stores it in my "server" * From there, it's a natural step to giving the retailer a token that can be…

FWIW, I've been able to cancel my NYT subscription with only a web form since I first subscribed in 2020. It works, and I use it every year. Some years there were several weeks before I got the discounted price again. I wonder how many years need to pass after a company removes a user-hostile pattern before it should stop being lambasted for it. I don't know how long they did what you say, but I could see that 5 year…

> I wonder how many years need to pass after a company removes a user-hostile pattern before it should stop being lambasted for it.

Why would there be a statute of limitations on this. A company doesn’t have an inherent right to customers. A lot of us gave up on Windows with XP (a second strike, after ME). Maybe it’s better now, maybe not, but why would I be motivated to give a company who screwed up already (due to making choices I hate, not just incompetence) another chance? NYT absolutely permanently lost customers by placing revenue above civility; which of us benefits from hoping people forget that?

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#274

Post by xp84 »

watwut wrote: post #159
xp84 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was this posted from a Brussels IP? This certainly seems to reflect how the EU regulators see themselves, but I haven't met many real Europeans who have themselves realized any actual value coming from their laughable, vague attempts at legislating the problems away. The best they've managed is making some Europeans smug, but their data still exists in all the same places. Worst case a few fines get levied, for megac…

So, if Europeans think these rules improved the situation, they are smug and dont count. Frankly, in here EU did a good job, certainly better then USA does. It would be neat if USA made similar laws too. Megacorps do get bigger fines then small companies, actually. Megacorps existence is also literally result of winner takes all and rich are untouchable legal system cranked to 11 Americans are proud of.

I didn't say the happy Europeans don't count, I said that their data is still in all the same places as everyone else's and thus haven't realized any concrete benefit. The requests to be able to download your data which almost no one ever does, all the requirements of keeping the data on EU servers, all that stuff, never has a measurable impact on anyone's quality of life. And people in the EU still choose free, ad-supported crap just like they do everywhere else.

And the regulatory environment 100% advantages large businesses who can afford to hire dozens of compliance attorneys, and who can handle the risks of noncompliance fines.

PS: I'm not saying US regulates anything effectively either. We just allow every merger until 2 remain in a given market, and then say "Good. We still have competition. Everything must be fine!"

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#275

Post by ben_w »

attila-lendvai wrote: post #271
ben_w wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That rips off the advertisers and/or leaves the poor poorer. For any given ad supported service, one of two things must be true: (1) the ad spend was more than or equal to the cost of the service for those users (2) the ad spend was less than the cost of the service for those users From fork (2), it follows that the service isn't sustainable anyway. From fork (1), it follows that the buyers of the ad slots in turn on…

or (3), the non-obvious, or non-advertised effects of the service may be valuable enough for powerful people to make the service "profitable" through artificial money flows (e.g. by paying for ads, endless investing, stock price manipulation, etc). thinking of stuff like facebook here...

Paying for ads like that is still a subset of fork (1). Even as propaganda, it has to somehow be "worth it" to spend the money.

Endless investing is, depending how you look at it, either not (just) ad supported and preceeds the premise, or it still is ad supported (and hence (1)) just with extra steps to badly hide who is doing it.

Hmm… I suppose the purchase of a vote in a democracy is something that a poor person might not otherwise be able to sell, and where "we advertised and convinced you" is (depending on campaign finance etc. rules) one of the legitimate ways to do it… but even then, for reasons too long to type on my phone, I'd say in this case it would still make the poor poorer.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#276

Post by jodrellblank »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #268
jodrellblank wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I paid a subscription to Amazon Prime Video. Amazon Prime introduced adverts. But I suppose expecting ad-free video streaming 'just because I paid for it' is also entitled and childish, because to people who use those things as putdowns, everything other people want, is. It's like "everything I don't like is woke" in that sense.

You pay for an ad-subsidized version of amazon prime video. The ad-free version is available if you cover the cost of lost ad revenue. Just because you pay doesn't mean there will be no ads. And just because there are ads doesn't mean there is an ad free service available. This is how smart TVs can be bought for $300. It's a $600 TV but you pay for half of it in smart TV ads.

> "You pay for an ad-subsidized version of amazon prime video."

Apparently so. But that isn't what I signed up for. That isn't the product I started out paying for. And that isn't the product I agreed to switch to, except by some weasel words on their part.

Your original argument is that people don't pay for things because people are crybabies. My counter argument is that people do and did pay for things and companies abused that, and now people are "once bitten, twice shy" not "entitled". People paid for NetFlix and then when that became a success, content companies pulled their content and made their own streaming services. People paid for YouTube Premium to avoid ads and then YouTube showed 'sponsorships' which are ads in all but name.

https://old.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/18ll7y6/i_have_you...

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#277

Post by brendoncarroll »

attila-lendvai wrote: post #258
ianopolous wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should talk. This very similar to how apps use E2EE data in Peergos. Maybe we can join forces. https://peergos.org/posts/a-better-web

you two should also be aware of https://www.ethswarm.org/ (censorship resistant distributed storage with the same API)

The same API part isn't surprising, content addressed stores are the most natural way to accept encrypted data.

The public storage networks are targeting a different use case than Blobcache though, which I think of as a private or web-of-trust storage network. To use a cryptocurrency backed storage solution, one must manage accounts, or a wallet of transaction outputs, connect to unknown parties on the internet, and pay for the increased redundancy. There's also legal risk, depending on the jurisdiction, when allowing untrusted parties to store arbitrary information on one's devices.

I don't want to consult the global economy in order to make use of my extra hard drives, which would otherwise be idle.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#278

Post by dd_xplore »

Hendrikto wrote: post #153
dd_xplore wrote: post #72

When I was a kid, a 4GB pendrive was a huge thing for me. I used to think my 40GB HDD would never fill up, but then Internet started to grow. Today it doesn’t even matter how muc storage you have it’ll always fill up. I have started to self host quite a lot of stuff but eve then every storage solution has a life of 5-6 years in which atleast one of the components would fail. We click enormous amounts of photos but th…

> ever growing storage costs (both cloud based and self hosted) That’s not my experience at all.

It's not the storage cost alone, it's about the redundancy, backups , the entire setup. Subscriptions aren't going to reduce anytime soon.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#279

Post by dd_xplore »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #142
dd_xplore wrote: post #72

When I was a kid, a 4GB pendrive was a huge thing for me. I used to think my 40GB HDD would never fill up, but then Internet started to grow. Today it doesn’t even matter how muc storage you have it’ll always fill up. I have started to self host quite a lot of stuff but eve then every storage solution has a life of 5-6 years in which atleast one of the components would fail. We click enormous amounts of photos but th…

I run a NAS, in various forms, for almost 20 years. The lifetime is quite longer, I still have ~ 10 year old drives in the backup NAS built on a Ryzen 1600 (8 years) and the average power supply works for me 10-12 years. The primary NAS is still on hardware that is more than 5 years old, except the drives that I just replaced with higher capacity. As I find the size of current drives bigger than my yearly additions (…

Wow nice! I had some HDDs , some of them were alive till 10 years but not much longer.

I'm amazed that with all these technologies we haven't figured out how to store data long term (atleast couple decades) without changing the underlying components. Like you said tape drives aren't for end users.Also with how technology is evolving (fast and disorganised) I'm not even sure if you would be able read a drive in 20 years. Very tech is that backward compatible.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#280

Post by AdrianB1 »

dd_xplore wrote: post #279
AdrianB1 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run a NAS, in various forms, for almost 20 years. The lifetime is quite longer, I still have ~ 10 year old drives in the backup NAS built on a Ryzen 1600 (8 years) and the average power supply works for me 10-12 years. The primary NAS is still on hardware that is more than 5 years old, except the drives that I just replaced with higher capacity. As I find the size of current drives bigger than my yearly additions (…

Wow nice! I had some HDDs , some of them were alive till 10 years but not much longer. I'm amazed that with all these technologies we haven't figured out how to store data long term (atleast couple decades) without changing the underlying components. Like you said tape drives aren't for end users.Also with how technology is evolving (fast and disorganised) I'm not even sure if you would be able read a drive in 20 yea…

The good thing is that 10 years later you need less HDDs of larger capacity to move your data to. And they tend to be cheaper. So every 10 years you move the data to a new set of disks, works good enough for most people. I did it a few weeks ago, it took ~ 8 hours over 10 Gbps Ethernet.

It is not necessarily bad we don't have a very long term storage solution. Imagine you took backups on 360kb FDD 40 years ago, you were drastically limited on how much data you could store and if we assume you had 1 GB of data back then, that is a huge pile of floppy disks to copy at very slow speed. Now imagine you have 10 TB of data today and that will be a tiny fraction of a microSD in 40 years, but reading your 10 TB from HDD will be painfully slow in the year 2065. At the same time if you replace the storage medium every 10 years you keep up better with capacity and performance.

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