Comment by zelphirkalt
2 months ago
I am not depending on cloud storage at all. What do I need to upload onto some cloud? And when I need to sync between devices, or rather want to sync, then I have a Syncthing setup on my server running. No cloud. And copies on participating devices.
Sure, it is not directly their fault, when they are treated badly by big tech. Though of course they could have been more careful, and rely less on big tech and cloud. We can all learn from this example, like many others before this one.
How do you collaborate ? Do you have friends ? A job ? I’m not being rhetorical —- it’s very rare to have friends or a job and not have some ties to the cloud. Even my tiny HOA manages its record in the cloud
> How do you collaborate ?
I commit code. I pair program. I share screen. That sort of thing. Code is mostly set up to have reproducible results. If it is not working on the other machine, then that's a bug and we need to solve it. There is not much collaboration I need to be doing in my free time. What I did on the last job is not what I depend on, but what a business thought they depend on. That's their stuff. If it fails because of some cloud ban or outage, not my problem.
When I need to share files with friends, I send them the files. Or I use Copyparty. Or, if they are more technically minded, I use Syncthing. For not so technical friends, I don't have to share 10k photos at once. Maybe I will send them a few photos via a messenger. Or some files they need via a messenger or have them on Copyparty, if needed often or again in the future. There is no issue.
> Do you have friends ?
Yes.
> A job ?
Had, and probably soon will have again, but I don't know what that has to do with what I depend on. If my job prescribes some cloud usage that is unnecessary, I guess I can try and show an alternative and begrudgingly accept that I have to use shitty tooling. But if somehow it is made impossible for me to use that, then it is their job to find an alternative. I am never the one prescribing it, and I myself don't depend on cloud.
> I’m not being rhetorical —- it’s very rare to have friends or a job and not have some ties to the cloud. Even my tiny HOA manages its record in the cloud
I surely have friends, who probably use some MS or Google cloud stuff. But that's their problem, not mine. I don't depend on that. And they don't share that much stuff with me, that there is sufficient incentive to start depending on it. And if they did, I would tell them, that I don't want to make a shitty account on MS or Google cloud storage thingies.
I can’t tell if this is disingenuous.
How do you plan an event like a wedding , moving, a project with your friends without using cloud apps?
And surely one of your employers had you use Onedrive / Google Drive / Dropbox etc.
If you really do all those things without cloud, are you just using email for everything? How do you keep the docs in sync ?
Presumably, as the GP said, you're not a normal person and you live in a basement. >sigh< (I'm with a lot of what the GP said but they didn't need to be insulting.)
The solutions self-hosting storage for non-technical people are terrible. Presumably there's no market for selling a solution that gives individuals data sovereignty. I would guess the margin isn't there and a recurring subscription for something you own is probably unpalatable to a lot of consumers. So this is what we get.
The main side-effect is the lack of trust and integration. For example, if you self-host your email (or more realistically push it on a VPS), then the moment you want to send an e-mail you are going to be marked as spam.
To register on some websites you may sometimes receive: “please use real email from gmail/outlook/etc”.
When you have a business meeting with a customer: “oh just install Jitsi on your mobile phone” is the best way to lose a sale.
Or no way to pay train tickets because you cannot install the app because your Apple / Play Store account is locked.
I get what you are saying, but the examples are not great:
I've rarely seen (if ever?) a website so stupid and user hostile, to claim that there are no other "real" e-mail service providers out there, other than gmail, outlook, or a maybe a few others. There are services, which reject things like tempmail, that much I have seen, definitely.
Jitsi Meet runs in the browser. Does it not on a mobile phone? Perhaps there is something to this one, if it is the case, that customers in some areas don't even own any working machines any longer and only have phones.
Train tickets, at least where I am from and living, one can always buy, by going to a service center, or online via browser. I never had to use an app to buy train tickets. Even when traveling in China, which is arguably much further in terms of digitization than Germany, I was able to buy train tickets via a website comfortably, upon which the ticket was registered to my passport.
But I get it, there can be such examples.
Though I don't think this really matches the "depend on the cloud" thing. It's more like depending on services, that make use of "the cloud", and not directly using cloud services oneself.
6 replies →
> there's no market for selling a solution that gives individuals data sovereignty
Theres no turnkey solution (of course not, it is prohibitively complex to architect one), but the bits and pieces are there, built on tried and tested software. For example, SMB and rsync and their clients, are practically enough to do backups.
Sovereignty also means responsibility. Either you have to keep your network secure, or you pay someone else do it (not always very well), otherwise you get security problems. Same goes for redundants backups, hardware maintenance, etc.
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