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The product that kicked off the topic is Google Photos, which I recently neared my storage limit on. Sensing that Google One may not be an ideal next step, I se

The product that kicked off the topic is Google Photos, which I recently neared my storage limit on. Sensing that Google One may not be an ideal next step, I set up my phone to backup photos and videos to my Synology instead using DSFile (Synology's file manager for Android). This has been pretty awesome so far, at least for my use cases. I think Synology is the closest product I know of that provides something like what you're describing, though, as you point out, it's not OSI open source.

gernb 4y ago
I use google photos for access, not backup. So, I can not only access all my photos from anywhere, I can also take advantage of their ML driven search. I'm not entirely happy with the UX of Google Photo's but it's 1000x better than a self hosted file share
- rpdillon 4y ago
  Ah, misunderstanding, perhaps. Synology offers global access, search, browsing, a dedicated app, and face detection. I just set up backup through the file manager.
  - rnk 4y ago
    But what reason is there to believe that the synology software stack isn't doing the same scanning of your texts, photos, whatever you put there. What happens if synology decides you did something illegal or 'bad' whatever that could mean, could they block your access on your own device, even if you were exonerated? And while that seems to be a great system, they can have bugs, make a mistake, have bad policies. I don't see a solution for this. Billions of people and probably a ton of people reading this on hacker news like me have their stuff at google or another top cloud provider. Google causes untold suffering for people by not let people recover their accounts. There was the recent librarian letter requesting help for people this happens too. We might know someone at google to ask for help. Wonder if this person did.
    - rpdillon 4y ago
      They only provide DNS. I choose when and if to update. Very different setup from Google, in many ways that matter to user autonomy. Most importantly, due to users hosting all the data using their own physical space, electricity, and bandwidth, the incentive for Synology to scan everything stored evaporates: they are not on the hook for illegal files hosted on a server in someone's home. I think the picture is less clear when it's Google or Apple doing the hosting, which leads them to scan people's files as a policy.

gernb 4y ago

I use google photos for access, not backup. So, I can not only access all my photos from anywhere, I can also take advantage of their ML driven search. I'm not entirely happy with the UX of Google Photo's but it's 1000x better than a self hosted file share

rpdillon 4y ago
Ah, misunderstanding, perhaps. Synology offers global access, search, browsing, a dedicated app, and face detection. I just set up backup through the file manager.
- rnk 4y ago
  But what reason is there to believe that the synology software stack isn't doing the same scanning of your texts, photos, whatever you put there. What happens if synology decides you did something illegal or 'bad' whatever that could mean, could they block your access on your own device, even if you were exonerated? And while that seems to be a great system, they can have bugs, make a mistake, have bad policies. I don't see a solution for this. Billions of people and probably a ton of people reading this on hacker news like me have their stuff at google or another top cloud provider. Google causes untold suffering for people by not let people recover their accounts. There was the recent librarian letter requesting help for people this happens too. We might know someone at google to ask for help. Wonder if this person did.
  - rpdillon 4y ago
    They only provide DNS. I choose when and if to update. Very different setup from Google, in many ways that matter to user autonomy. Most importantly, due to users hosting all the data using their own physical space, electricity, and bandwidth, the incentive for Synology to scan everything stored evaporates: they are not on the hook for illegal files hosted on a server in someone's home. I think the picture is less clear when it's Google or Apple doing the hosting, which leads them to scan people's files as a policy.