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Google change is breaking some digital photo frames

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Re: Google change is breaking some digital photo frames

#41

Post by shanemhansen »

nar001 wrote: post #14
philips wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It cuts both ways. It will probably make it ever harder for users to get a backup of their photos. I tried to build a product to help people get a physical backup out of Google Photos but their API had so many rate limits and random other errors it would take _days_ or more: https://www.clonecamel.com Now, I need to also look at how this will work with my personal backup system that uses rclone to an encrypted USB dr…

Wouldn't using Google Takeout do that already? I thought that was the point, to take out your data?

The nice thing about Google Takeout is that sometimes, if you retry often enough, it works.

The frequent failures to generate my takeout are annoying though.

Re: Google change is breaking some digital photo frames

#42

Post by jdmg94 »

righthand wrote: post #37
ketralnis wrote: post #27

This is exactly why even as a programmer I don't own pretty much any tech crap at all. No cloud connected home automation, photo frames, voice assistant, smart lock, wifi washing machine, nothing. The whole industry is just too brittle and unreliable and your money will evaporate the moment some product manager doesn't want to schedule a bug fix and kills the product instead because it's easier than meeting the promi…

All of our technology is presented as seemless, integrated, secure, and robust and couldn’t be further from the truth.

after working at Amazon for a couple of years I ended up closing my AWS account

Re: Google change is breaking some digital photo frames

#43

Post by Larrikin »

ketralnis wrote: post #27

This is exactly why even as a programmer I don't own pretty much any tech crap at all. No cloud connected home automation, photo frames, voice assistant, smart lock, wifi washing machine, nothing. The whole industry is just too brittle and unreliable and your money will evaporate the moment some product manager doesn't want to schedule a bug fix and kills the product instead because it's easier than meeting the promi…

As a programmer you should look into Home Assistant and the self hosted community in general. You can achieve a lot and don't have to shut yourself out of legitimate technological improvements that are limited by some other company's cloud.

Re: Google change is breaking some digital photo frames

#44

Post by philips »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #35
philips wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever used takeout? You get 33 1GB chunks in a link sent via _EMAIL_ that then I have to click on and authenticate in my browser. 33 clicks.

You can have it automatically upload to dropbox or a few other hosting services which I don't remember. And then you can download it with one click.

I tried dozens of times to get it to upload to OneDrive and it always failed.

Re: Google change is breaking some digital photo frames

#45

Post by com2kid »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #28
com2kid wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This new API is so bad that it is breaking Google photo albums on Android TVs! No one wants to manually add each photo to a slideshow. Google Photos has AI that automatically makes themed albums, it works great. I point my TV at my family photos, new pictures of my family are automatically added as I take them, and then shown on my TV. That is how it is supposed to work. This new locked down API places all the securi…

Is it a huge net loss for Google though?

I'm paying for their photo service. If their photo service gets dumbed down to become a simple file store, it makes it easier for me to migrate to a different photo storage service.

Re: Google change is breaking some digital photo frames

#46

Post by psadauskas »

ketralnis wrote: post #27

This is exactly why even as a programmer I don't own pretty much any tech crap at all. No cloud connected home automation, photo frames, voice assistant, smart lock, wifi washing machine, nothing. The whole industry is just too brittle and unreliable and your money will evaporate the moment some product manager doesn't want to schedule a bug fix and kills the product instead because it's easier than meeting the promi…

A tech enthusiast has all the latest gadgets and gizmos, everything connected to the cloud, and loves showing it off to guests.

Someone who works in tech, the most advanced technology they own is a laser printer from 2005, and they keep a loaded gun next to it in case it makes a funny noise.

Re: Google change is breaking some digital photo frames

#47

Post by Carrok »

Larrikin wrote: post #43
ketralnis wrote: post #27

This is exactly why even as a programmer I don't own pretty much any tech crap at all. No cloud connected home automation, photo frames, voice assistant, smart lock, wifi washing machine, nothing. The whole industry is just too brittle and unreliable and your money will evaporate the moment some product manager doesn't want to schedule a bug fix and kills the product instead because it's easier than meeting the promi…

As a programmer you should look into Home Assistant and the self hosted community in general. You can achieve a lot and don't have to shut yourself out of legitimate technological improvements that are limited by some other company's cloud.

Yea, I have plenty of home automation, all of which operates just fine without any external internet connection whatsoever. You just have to do a little research on what to buy.

Re: Google change is breaking some digital photo frames

#48

Post by nightpool »

crazygringo wrote: post #40
nightpool wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, if you look at the screenshots on that page it's clear that when they mention albums, they're only talking about the search experience, not the picking experience: https://developers.google.com/static/photos/images/picker-pi... They also clarify this in the documentation: "Albums, favorites, and other common photos categories are not show [sic] directly. Users can search for photos using various criteria, such as…

It's still not 100% clear to me, but I definitely see what you're saying. I know there's no album reference, but it seems entirely possible that Image files returned are all from a specific album, without having to choose them one-by-one. That seems entirely consistent with the API, the only question is the actual Picker interface. If Google really has removed the ability to share all photos from a picked album, that…

Did you see the section of the doc I quoted that said albums wouldn't be shown to the user? I think that makes it clear that it's by design

Re: Google change is breaking some digital photo frames

#49

Post by TeMPOraL »

Larrikin wrote: post #43
ketralnis wrote: post #27

This is exactly why even as a programmer I don't own pretty much any tech crap at all. No cloud connected home automation, photo frames, voice assistant, smart lock, wifi washing machine, nothing. The whole industry is just too brittle and unreliable and your money will evaporate the moment some product manager doesn't want to schedule a bug fix and kills the product instead because it's easier than meeting the promi…

As a programmer you should look into Home Assistant and the self hosted community in general. You can achieve a lot and don't have to shut yourself out of legitimate technological improvements that are limited by some other company's cloud.

Increasingly, a lot of those "legitimate technological improvements" are completely destroying interoperability. Google, in particular, has been making a lot of such annoying moves in the past couple years, on Android, GSuite, WearOS, and now Photos.
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