don't trust cloud services with creative work
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The thing is, we really don't know what's in the hardware, how do we know there isn't a "Intel ME" on your phone that is just hibernating, waiting for the right kill signal?
Phone SoCs aren't made by Intel lol. You should be more worried about modem/baseband firmware.
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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.
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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.
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]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"
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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.
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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.
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if a government or corporation or whoever is seeking to delete your personal files specifically, i think you have much bigger problems to worry about
A government isn't going to care about your files outside of using them as evidence against you.
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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.
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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.
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Actually many people use cloud as the original. I don't get why we are pretending this isn't normal.
wrote last edited by [email protected]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....
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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.
Your supervisors are wrong. How they think that attitude is acceptable or normal is beyond me.
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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.
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]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.
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Phone SoCs aren't made by Intel lol. You should be more worried about modem/baseband firmware.
The phrase 'a “Intel ME” on your phone' is not literally saying that Intel has control over your phone, its alluding to the widely known Intel backdoor, basically using that to point out: "You phone could have something similar"
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TLDR: make multiple backups
Two is one and one is none
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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?
