Am I too old? I only trust hard saving to offline storage. Be that an external hdd or a flash drive.
people just never learn that companies cannot be trusted…time and time again, they work to steal and claim ownership of your intelligence.
people don’t need to learn that. these things need to be regulated. also Google needs to be broken up to like 12 pieces or nationalized. what needs to happen is companies not have this much power ever.
what needs to happen is companies not have this much power ever.
There is zero chance that we can get the oligarchy to surrender power peacefully, so that’s not going to happen unless…
For legal purposes this comment is a joke
Circumcision it’s no joke sir.
Famously Americans did the splitting thing once before with Standard Oil and it was immensely beneficial to the economy in general. Just checked the wiki and it was more than 100 years ago. Unlikely the same laws are still on the books.
There are several companies currently active that deserve the same treatment.
The same laws are still on the books, actually! We just never use them anymore.
The big one is the Sherman Anti-trust Act.
Hey we did the same thing with AT&T! Split them into a bunch of smaller companies which then merged back together after a few years…shit…
We also nationalized several enormous companies with arguably excellent results (ConEd, Amtrak, the post-WWI FRA).
I’m in university (as an old) and just about everyone from faculty to staff has been pushing me to put everything in OneDrive. I know better, but young people tend to trust that an educational institution is looking out for them.
My freshman year I met teenagers who didn’t know what a flash drive is. Most of them have iPads with no storage, one of my classmates was just uploading all her lectures directly to YouTube so she could review them later.
There’s nothing wrong with putting everything in OneDrive… as long as you also have it somewhere else.
At work we’re told to put everything into OneDrive and we’re blocked from using USB drives, or using any other online storage. Fortunately all of the data I use and create on my work computer belongs to my employer, so if they only trust MS with their data then who am I to argue?
Businesses are classic chumps for the Microsoft scam. It’s why Microsoft will stop producing new products and just live off the Office suite for another 100 years, easy.
Yeah, I understand why employers use it. Oddly, I used to work for Microsoft and can’t remember using OneDrive for our projects lol
But as a student I really prefer saving stuff locally and to a separate storage device. The university system has been hacked at least once since I’ve been a student, we all lost our credentials and were required to physically go to the campus to reset them. The university also revokes access three years after graduation.
Oddly, I used to work for Microsoft and can’t remember using OneDrive for our projects lol
They knew better than to get high off their own supply
Several years ago we had a Microsoft consultant come out to draw up plans to get us to start using SCCM and using OneDrive was included. We spent several weeks working on this project and we had a meeting scheduled with the CIO on a Friday afternoon after a full week of working on the presentation with the consultant. We went out to lunch and the consultant left his computer bag in the backseat of my car… and someone busted out my window and stole his computer. Which also included his external hard drive where he backs up all of his data. He lost everything. I asked him if he had it backed up to OneDrive and he sheepishly admitted that he doesn’t use OneDrive.
Leaving computer equipment or bags visible in an unattended car is a big no no. What’s the boot for?
It was a hatchback, and the back seat had tinted windows, so he thought it was safe… Unfortunately I didn’t realize he had his bag with him or I would have had him bring it into the restaurant. I’m a lot more careful now.
I’m in university (as an old) (…) I know better, but young people
wait, are you saying that twenty-something is old? 😂
Where did you get twenty-something from? No, I consider people in their twenties to be young people.
Where did you get twenty-something from?
that’s usual age when people are at the university. your “as an old” might probably be worded more clearly if you meant something different.
You can go back to college at any age as long as you’ve got the money for classes.
i see you must be from the freedom country. in civilized world, you can do that without the money 😜 it is just that the wording wasn’t very clear.
I see you must be from the Star Fleet academy where they no longer use currency for anything. There’s more to the cost of college classes than tuition.
You don’t need to trust to use cloud services, I copy encrypted backups into the cloud. The only risk is that they don’t give it back but that’s why you have multiple backups.
Yeah this is the answer.
This old school idea of “keep it on a drive” misses the fact that you can lose it, forget it, it can break, hardware can fail, etc.
If you have your book on a flash drive and it breaks, good luck. I have my stuff on 3 different services encrypted. I can literally get my info from anywhere at any time.
Especially trusting cloud storage without a local backup for psyche-critical work - absolutely bonkers
I always get told that they would never take your stuff away, even though there are lots of examples.
Yes we’re too experienced and sceptical.
Yeah, for me cloud storage is one of many backups, but it’s just that, a backup. It should never be the original or only. It’s there in case your PC shits the bed, not as your prime storage.
Actually many people use cloud as the original. I don’t get why we are pretending this isn’t normal.
No one’s pretending otherwise, they’re saying it’s dumb to do so.
Because it’s wrong. If you don’t have physical access to your files, you don’t have a backup. Someone else does, but you do not. It’s like saying “I own a Lamborghini” when it’s parked in a garage across the country that you’re not allowed to enter and the only way you can see it is by them sending a picture. Sure, your name is on the title, but is it really yours if you can only access it at the behest of someone else?
Nevermind the fact that a backup isn’t just for data loss. It’s also for network loss. No Internet means no cloud. What good is a PC if it can only do work while online?
But hey, nothing has ever disappeared from the internet, right? Hold that thought while I pull up my old photos from MySpace…
Yes. No one ever listened except the other nerds from our generation. Everyone else was to old to understand at the time and the rest just jumped in because they learned it in preschool.
You are not too old. I feel the exact same way. Anything worth keeping should be saved locally. Plus storage today is so cheap, there really is no excuse to save exclusively on the cloud.
No, you aren’t. I only use it because my work makes me to be able to share with everyone in the district.
i use ms word to save certain things, offline, an older version of office not the new ms office that forces AI. i do that to save certain things, like resumes,etc.
Lemmy taught me that if you try to cancel, they’ll offer you ms sans-ai. Save 3 whole bucks too.
we dont have that new bs with Microsoft, we have a cracked version or one that works just fine. our work started to use the newest ms version, it was pretty crappy UI.
I don’t trust having only local files. Ideally you should have multiple local copies with at least one cloud storage and encrypt everything before you upload, so unless your house catches on fire and your cloud storage also fucks you over at the same time, then you are protected against both risks if they happen as separate incidents.
Also maybe go somewhere in the woods and hide a box of encrypted hard drives there, just to be extra safe. So three backups. Your house, A box buried in the woods, and cloud storage.
ZK encryption has [yet] been debunked yet but I am sure there is risk there too
What are you referring to? What is “ZK” here?
Zero Knowledge ie service provider doesn’t have view of the content just that you are using the service e
So something like MEGA or Proton Drive?
All proton services are zk except their LLM Andy is trying to sell us recently.
Filen, bitwarden any self respecting service is now zk.
If it ain’t, you are being punked
Thanks for the explanation. I always knew that concept just as E2EE.
E2ee to me is like signal, ie they don’t store data except meta data. Zk implies data at rest is encrypted
I am no expert just a prosumer
“Zero Knowledge Encryption” is the reference but I’m not sure how it applies here.
Zero-knowledge…? Maybe? But you can encrypt your stuff locally before sending it up
ZK encryption has been debunked
I’d love to see proof of that
Typo
Cloud can be a backup, it absolutely should never be your only copy.
But keep in mind they will probably use that data for anything they want, like training AI models. So make sure you are ok with them doing that on any data you put there. This is mostly why I fill my cloud space with incoherent nonsense.
If you want to back up anything important on someone else’s server (cloud), put it all into an encrypted blob. It’s not a bad idea to use them to put a copy of your files in a different physical location, but also don’t trust them any further than necessary.
Cryptomator is a great tool for this
Or rclone.
I just use an European cloud storage provider instead. It’s cheaper than Google Drive and all the others. It just does not have the fancy client, which to me is a plus honestly.
What is the cloud storage provider you use? I’m currently just renting a VPS from Contabo for a few euros a month with a Nextcloud instance running on it. It costs me four and a half euros a month.
Commenting to follow
The extra words are not needed. The most accurate version is just:
Don’t trust cloud companies.
The extra words are not needed. The most accurate version is just:
Don’t trust companies.
The extra words are not needed. The most accurate version is just:
Don’t trust.
And there are people who think you’re joking, reductio ad absurdum.
You can’t trust your own computer, because the hard drive might go bad at any moment, so you backup up a USB drive. But you can’t trust that backup, because your house could burn down, or get flooded, or get caught in a tornado; so you back up to cloud, too. But you can’t trust that because, well, cloud.
At some point, you just have to accept that there will always be risk, no matter what you do. You take steps to minimize it until your comfort level exceeds the cost or PITA-ness of your backup solutions, but those who know, know you can never guarantee you’ve covered all the bases.
Don’t trust, indeed.
The extra word is not needed. The most accurate version is just:
Don’t.
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Really this is the most correct. Saves so much time. Just don’t.
The extra word
s areis not needed. The most accurate version is just:Don’t
It’s worth noting that Google is 100x worse than the baseline level of sucking when it comes to randomly deleting your account with no recourse.
The only time in my life I’ve seriously considered suicide was when I lost the usb drive that had all my novel notes on it. If a major company ripped everything from me because “reasons”, I’d be considering homicide instead.
By the way, git is good for more than just software. I keep my novel notes in a git repository these days.
I do my writing in markdown. Keeps me from being distracted over formatting. Easily converted to HTML/EPUB for review and editing. git + plaintext + pandoc is a dream.
Yes, same here - I do all my show scripts in Markdown. My editor of choice is IntelliJ. For any non-technical writers here, IntelliJ is like what Scrivener wants to be when it grows up.
I have tried lots of text editors, tons. None of them quite do what I want. I installed CudaText. It’s now my favorite. I love it so much. The settings… Oh, the delicious settings…
Ah yes, the very first lesson I’d teach in my multimedia ‘authoring’ class: Back your shit up, here’s 11 ways to do that; if you EVER tell me you lost your work as an excuse I’m going to LAUGH IN YOUR FACE as I assign you a ZERO.
I never really liked Google, but their whole thing was supposed to be that you never needed to worry about backups.
But as Google so often does, they’ve decided to screw people over who relied on their drive and office suite.
I never really liked Google, but their whole thing was supposed to be that you never needed to worry about backups.
no it wasn’t. no sane person ever told you that. everyone always knew situation like the one described here will come sooner or later.
google might have told you so, but it is of similar value to when tobacco company tells you that smoking is healthy and to please continue smoking (and giving us money).
they’ve decided to screw people over who relied on their drive and office suite.
these people are not the customers. i will repeat that, because this part is really important - THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT THE CUSTOMERS.
when you don’t pay for the service, you are not the customer, you are the merchandise that is being sold. and you are treated like one. when you are selling screwdrivers and one of them fall of the shelf, you don’t bother yourself thinking if it hurt.
Do you think that people don’t pay for Google Drive? The 15 GB they give you is a free sample. Their basic 100 GB cloud storage plan costs 20 USD annually and the premium 2 TB plan costs 200 USD annually. Maybe you don’t pay for Google Drive, but there are over 150 million people who do. These people are paying customers.
These people are paying customers.
well, it is a good thing they are treated as such and there is no problem then 😂
That’s certainly a different angle from the one you were parroting in your previous comment.
these people are not the customers. i will repeat that, because this part is really important - THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT THE CUSTOMERS
no, it is not, you just did not get it.
now hush, go pay something to google for a privilege to have your data analyzed for targeting your ads as everyone else and feel superior about it, you valued customer!
Sorry, mate. You’re going to have to think for yourself instead of just repeating the catchy things you heard on YouTube or Reddit.
You first tried to argue that these people “weren’t the customer, they were the product”, because you thought the purpose of Google Drive was to collect data from its users for advertising purposes. Google doesn’t do that, and they’d be morons if they did because they’d be quickly caught and everyone would get weirded out and stop using their shit.
No, the purpose of Google Drive and Google’s office suite being handed out free of charge is the same reason they sell discounted Chromebooks to schools and provide Gmail for free. You are right, it isn’t out of the goodness of their hearts. These are all basically free samples to get people using the product, so when a small portion of those individuals enter into decision-making positions for organisations, they, having tried the product, think “Let’s go with Google Workspace”. Google then earns 60 USD per user per year. Ka-ching.
This is a rare instance where the big corporation’s interests happen to be to make the best possible product.
Look, you and I know this. I never trusted Google for anything. But I’m just saying, I understand why normies are shocked and feel betrayed.
I understand why normies are shocked and feel betrayed.
they can’t say they have not been warned. sometimes the “we told you so” is not as satisfying as it should be…
Actually you can pay for google services including cloud storage and many businesses do this. How are they not customers?
How are they not customers?
if they were treated as such, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, would we?
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a bit harsh, but often the most important lessons in life are those that hurt the most.
I was training students for a deadline driven technical field. They needed to know that when deadline day comes, it’s not “oopsie doopsy” my dog ate my homework, it’s you are now out of business, everybody you work alongside is jobless, you are bankrupt, get your resume going and good luck dude.
This is the policy of most colleges these days. The school will provide a service to do that but it’s up to the student to ensure their work is backed up. Granted most schools only offer OneDrive but still, you’re told ahead of time.
Using cloud services as the only copy is literally what I have been told to do working on my PhD by my supervisors. This is in the cybersecurity department. How you think this attitude is acceptable or normal is beyond me.
The whole point of modern cloud platforms is they worry about this so you don’t have to. Not that people ever actually followed 321 backup policy anyway.
Edit: at least my stuff is on two different cloud services.
I’m sure this was reasonable 10 years ago, when Google didn’t have a policy of erasing people’s files without reason.
I am not talking about Google but rather Overleaf and GitHub. Though there is university data kept on Google Drive including students marks.
If you are using GitHub, then the cloud copy is obviously not the only copy.
Your supervisors are wrong. How they think that attitude is acceptable or normal is beyond me.
I have TWO USB backups.
My brother fucked one up for his Windows XP obsession. Which would be funny, if it were not dangerous.
Justified obsession tbh.
TLDR: make multiple backups
Two is one and one is none
And none is unacceptable
Always, always backup. And frequently! Don’t trust your local harddrive (especially if it’s a device you frequently take with you), don’t trust flashdrives, don’t even trust your local fileserver if it doesn’t have built-in backups (and even if it does, check that those backups actually work). If it’s not saved on at least two physical places (two drives in the same PC/server count, but it’s sketchy on its own), it’s not backed up!
3-2-1 Backup: 3 copies, on 2 types of media, 1 of which is offsite.
I just scatter mine under the fingernails of multiple unhoused individuals throughout the city. It’s a bit of a pain, but it’s peace of mind. I’m thinking of expanding into microfiche hidden in fortune cookies next.
I convert all my files to wavforms and teach starlings the songs
Hard to take the photo of it, but I backed up your comment to a CD:
Software used: https://github.com/arduinocelentano/cdimage
▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒
“Well, I don’t know what I expected“
I do the same thing but inscribe them onto clay pottery.
Don’t forget to draw your backups in the sand…
Uh, you should maybe read up on the latest trump executive order. Those unhoused fingernail storage units are likely to all end up in the same place.
two drives in the same PC/server count, but it’s sketchy on its own
If your house/office burns down, all your data is lost. At least one backup should be off-site!
One backup copy isn’t enough anyway! The more the merrier, just make sure that enough of it is automated that your backups don’t get stale, and ideally stagger the timings so you don’t immediately overwrite all the automated backups with trash data once something goes wrong.
At one point I accidentally deleted a file, but I could conveniently copy it from the copy in my fileserver that automatically gets updated every two weeks.
I only do manual backups, but I’m the kind of person who does it multiple times a day anyway - whenever I do a major edit on a work or hobby file - just for my peace of mind :)
And yes, only “airlocked” backups. I manually use FreeFileSync to mirror my files to a local backup folder on another HDD (I have multiple paired folders set up inside that, so FFS doesn’t have to check tens of thousands of other files if I only edited a particular project that day), and keep only that synced to Google Drive. So if either the active local copy or Google Drive is corrupted or lost, the file is not automatically lost on the other end. I also found it a neat surprise that Google Drive retains past versions of files, it came handy a few times.
Lucky me, I recently acquired two 4TB hard drives, and I’m making a point to use one as my active backup, and every few months or so, clone that drive to the other one and swap them, just in case one ever fails ya know…
Doesn’t swapping increase the chance of total failure?
You’re basically using them equally, which makes it more likely that the surviving hard drive failes while copy the data to the future brand new replacement drive.
(This is obviously assuming, that storing a drive is different to you using the drive and that both drives will fail around the same time)
Meh, anything can happen at any time, I’ve come to accept that.
These are basically brand new surveillance grade hard drives, which means they’re designed to run 24/7 and run cooler than consumer grade drives. Neither one has any bad sectors, and they both purr quieter than kittens.
I always keep one completely offline and totally disconnected, sitting on a shelf, save for the occasional clone day where I have both connected.
I figure the chances of both failing at once are on an astronomical scale.
Why not just use a RAID?
RAID isn’t a backup. It only protects against one mode of data loss, disk failure, which is probably the one the average user should be least worried about.
My CPU crapped out. And the wire leading to the thing that goes ‘beep’ when you turn on cpu was broken.
In trying to diagnose the CPU issue, I had to turn computer on and off a lot. Somehow, doing that on and off repeatedly corrupted the hard drives. So raid doesn’t protect against problems like that or power spikes that fry things.And the wire leading to the thing that goes ‘beep’ when you turn on cpu was broken.
I haven’t seen a PC that would actually have audible post codes in a very long time. Nowadays it’s usually LEDs, or a very simple little display.
Its a little cylinder with 2 wires leading to the mobo. Not for error codes but for the ‘beep’ that happe is when you turn on computer. Is that not a thing any more?
Nope. At least, not that I’ve seen even slightly recently. I got into PCs ~15 years ago, and they were already becoming a lot less common then. It probably still exists in some niche way, that’s usually how it goes. Maybe HP still uses them or something like that.
Sorry if any of this is stuff you already know: The beep is a POST code- power on self test. That beep when you turn on the computer is basically the computer saying, “everything started correctly, from here on it’s probably a software problem.”
If there is a problem and your motherboard can figure out what it is- bad cpu, bad ram, no video, etc- it gives a POST code via the little speaker. It’s a nice troubleshooting tool, because a lot of the time the hardest part of the fix is figuring out what part is the problem.
Redundant network storage is cheap and available. If you’re a little tech savvy, one of those and a cheap hosting plan accomplishes two copies local, and one remote.
I’m using a laptop with external USB adapters.
Check my comment history though, my very last comment to another post made a silly reference to RAID…
This is extra bad because they want you to use cloud files in gdrive (I can’t remember what the feature is actually called), which doesn’t save the content locally on your computer, but puts an icon that will download the content from Google servers when you click on it. This means you have no local backup of your data in your computer backups.
This is also why we’re screaming about Windows and it’s integrated AI that can scan your drive. What Google is doing here Windows could do in the future with your local files. “That’s a nice collection of 2000s MP3s you have aaaand it’s gone.”
“That’s a nice program you have there but the creator has revoked the licensing. So we disabled it until you update your license”
And even then, if you make sure to copy the actual file, you’d still depend on them to open it if it’s in their proprietary format.
reads like an ad for that service they plugged
Maybe, but it’s a well known writer’s tool. I don’t think they need to push this angle.
I just realized the other day that one of the updates on my Chromebook automatically installed something called “NotebookLM” on my app bar. Never asked for it. Never even looked at apps on my Chromebook before. But it’s there now, and it super secret bloodswap pinky swares it won’t steal my ideas or writing. What an odd thing to say on first open.
In the process of degoogling my life. Email and files are gone, but I use GMaps, still.
Google (still) offers a regular backup of your data to download. You can set it up to run at intervals and just download the entire thing. Includes file (and photos), email, messages, etc. It’s great for products you forget you were using, and great for an offline backup.
I use waze and google maps. Although I contribute sometimes with streetcomplete and openstreetmaps, their respective android apps are dog shit at navigating. Certain hiking trails and maybe biking trails though, they might be better but for things like driving cars, traffic reports, nearby attractions, google is still superior.
Edit: fixed bad grammar
FYI Waze is owned by Google.
Yes, I’m well aware. I just like the user contributions part of Waze it’s like google maps but aimed for driving
I’m getting by just fine on CoMaps usually, but I also live in the best mapped area in the world so the mileage does vary. If I’m in a rush I’ll bust out GMaps tho, have it set up in the “private space”
I know it’s a big jump from Adobe Cloud (which probably used user behavior tracking and their work to train AI) but it is possible to make great stuff with open source apps now.
The newly released GIMP 3.0 is quite amazing considering that it is free. Is it as good as Photoshop? Maybe it lacks all the features, but it’s pretty damn good. If you install GMIC, an amazing suite of tools, it gets that much closer. Inkscape is also professional level for vector work now. Honorable mentions to Krita and kdenlive (for video editing). edit: I shouldn’t leave out blender, jeesus.
I left Adobe Cloud 9 years ago. Yeah I had to endure a lot of ridicule and weird looks when I told people that I only worked in GIMP, but more recently, the response is less “You’re weird” and more “I need Cloud for my job/it’s all I know,” which is a positive change.
If nobody ever makes the leap, things will stay the same indefinitely. Don’t expect market forces to change things.
You know a good open source Illustrator alternative? I’ve only worked with Inkscape here and there, but the interface is pretty challenging for me to wrap my head around after spending so much time in Illustrator
graphite looks promising but is still in early days
The only solid vector graphics app I’ve used in open source is Inkscape. I agree, it’s very difficult to get to know, even moreso if you’re coming from old school raster imaging and don’t get all the mathiness. I had to learn Inkscape though, because I needed to make fantasy maps with textual titles that didn’t look like crap when rescaled.
I’m no expert, but it does pay off to learn. It’s a very powerful set of tools.
Honestly, GIMP and Inkscape are a sad joke. Affinity Photo/Designer are the best option right now, I think. All the features without a cloud.
You have your own definitions of joke, best, and sad. That’s fine.
There was a cool browser extension back in the days that changed the word “cloud” to “someone else’s computer” in the articles on the internet. It changes perspective and eliminates a lot of headache this way.
This reframing can be super useful in getting corporate types to understand that storing stuff in the cloud isn’t a magic solution, and that it comes with its own problems (especially in terms of data governance stuff).
Even on weather articles?
Especially on the weather articles. Heavy someone else’s computers with the good chance of rain.
What a clusterfuck.
