5 ms·

Turns out time and time again that the most sustainable way to store your personal data (health, financial, notes,...) is in flat files on your harddisk, not so

by t_mann 4y ago

Turns out time and time again that the most sustainable way to store your personal data (health, financial, notes,...) is in flat files on your harddisk, not some startup's cloud service. Not that that will stop them from collecting, but at least from putting your access behind some walls or disappearing all of a sudden.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
Except, for the vast majority of people, that is definitely not true. It's actually extremely rare for your average person to get locked out of their Google account (though, of course, it does happen, as chronicled so frequently on HN). It's extremely common for people to lose their hard drive, or have it otherwise damaged by a fall or fire, or just have it crash due to age without a sufficient backup. It order to fix the problems with modern corporate surveillance, we can't keep pretending that storing things in the cloud and using cloud services doesn't have huge benefits. Just telling everyone to only store things in flat files on their local disk just brings up the "old man yells at cloud" meme in my head. What we need are stronger laws. For example, if one company is acquired by another, and that company demands a new login scheme that can link additional data, I think they should need to give you the option of a full refund.
- jjulius 4y ago
  I agree, but that's one hell of an uphill battle considering the amount of money that would be behind those opposing such laws. Until said laws pass, storing things locally is a valid option for a stopgap despite how cumbersome it might be. Edit: I also have little faith in any legal remedy going far enough. The cat's out of the proverbial bag, too many businesses "depend" on data, and the government certainly enjoys being able to more easily access your data via cloud businesses than having to deal with a different enduser's setup every single time. Not saying we can't make progress, but I'm pessimistic.
- t_mann 4y ago
  You're right about the backup situation, but I would still say that even just having your personal data in a flat file backed up with OneDrive - which a lot of users probably have set up without even fully realizing - still beats the app-specific cloud for most purposes (both access- and privacy-wise). Just consider the difference that it makes in the mental model of vendor lock-in. And yes, it may not be that common for people to lose their Google account, but that's really just one failure mode of relying on in-app storage. The provider may decide to suddenly put parts of your data behind a paywall (like Slack just did), or may straight up cease to exist. Even if Microsoft were to do something similar to your OneDrive account, you'd still have your local copy and could change your cloud backup provider with very reasonable effort.
- jsnell 4y ago
  And how long should that obligation exist? Google bought Fitbit in 2019. The article says the Fitbit account system will be supported until 2025. That seems pretty decent compared to the expected lifetime of the hardware? (My 2017 Alta was basically useless in 2020, completely dead in 2021).
  - varelse 4y ago
    [dead]
- Karellen 4y ago
  The thing is, a lot of people own more than one device. Even more people know a couple of people who have devices with some spare space. Wouldn't it be great if we had a way that people could "join" trusted devices to create mutual background backups. So I could pair my laptop with my phone, and each would back up "essential" data for the other. But I could also pair my phone with my significant other, and our phones would also work as backups of each other. Syncing could be done on some kind of schedule, maybe when they're in bluetooth range, or maybe if they find each other on the same LAN. Or maybe they could use cloud storage to transfer E2E encrypted blobs. (i.e. my phone would backup my laptop and my parter's phone, my partner's phone would back up my phone, and my laptop would also back up my phone. If my partner wanted/was willing to also back up my laptop, that would be a separate step, and they would back up each other.) Deciding which data should be considered "essential" is left as an exercise for the implementor :-)
  - nradov 4y ago
    In principle you can do most of that with IPFS. The user experience isn't great though, especially when trying to use it as a backup solution for multiple people across multiple platforms. Someone might be able to build a startup around fixing this.
  - _emacsomancer_ 4y ago
    Like what Syncthing does?
- prepend 4y ago
  > It's actually extremely rare for your average person to get locked out of their Google account It’s also extremely rare for an average person’s house to burn down. Or extremely rare for a 500 year flood. Or an asteroid hitting the earth. Should we not prepare for, avoid, and mitigate these risks? It’s not telling people to store flat files in the cloud. It’s encouraging sustainable protocols that decompose to strong flat files in the cloud. Story time is when ynab originally just write their files to a file structure and used Dropbox to sync. Then they switched to saas, charged people a monthly fee and store customer data in their proprietary cloud. One day ynab will go away and so will their data. Their earlier method will last forever because of the portability of flat files. Customer lock in makes companies more money.
  - BurritoAlPastor 4y ago
    People are also not really expected to be individually responsible for mitigating flood or fire risk; they buy insurance. People can’t buy insurance for getting locked out of their Google account. We’re currently in a “well it’s your own fault for not owning and furnishing a second house in case the first one burns down” situation for digital property.
    - nyokodo 4y ago
      > People can’t buy insurance for getting locked out of their Google account Maybe they should be able to? I’d purchase that kind of insurance!
      - t_mann 4y ago
        That might actually be interesting, because then there'd be actors who could give Google and the other BigTechs a lot more heat than any individual user can over unjustified account deletions (to avoid having to pay out the insurance premium).
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - Retric 4y ago
- anothernewdude 4y ago
  Oh no, my old fitness data!
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  Err, world is not black and white, one can come up with various strategies how to do backups and end up very very fine in 99,99% of the situations, which is perfectly fine for vast majority of use cases. And even giants like Google and Amazon dont guarantee that much above this. You mention laws and thats the core problem and its naive to just rely on them. Corporations are profit-first, bonus-first, and employ progressively more sociopaths as you move up the management hierarchy. This is simple sad fact regardless of industry or country. Those folks see laws as obstacles, and unfortunately often try to game them. The results are basically all the fines big banks face from regulators, financial crises, endless internet privacy issues and so on. People just gaming well intended rules for their own profit. plus re laws - we don't have judiciary hegemony over whole Earth. Corporations move their activities to weakest jurisdictions immediately, ie Ireland for taxes from Europe. Or they do pay minimal taxes in US. DOn't expect privacy to be handled better by default.

by t_mann 4y ago

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

Except, for the vast majority of people, that is definitely not true. It's actually extremely rare for your average person to get locked out of their Google account (though, of course, it does happen, as chronicled so frequently on HN). It's extremely common for people to lose their hard drive, or have it otherwise damaged by a fall or fire, or just have it crash due to age without a sufficient backup. It order to fix the problems with modern corporate surveillance, we can't keep pretending that storing things in the cloud and using cloud services doesn't have huge benefits. Just telling everyone to only store things in flat files on their local disk just brings up the "old man yells at cloud" meme in my head. What we need are stronger laws. For example, if one company is acquired by another, and that company demands a new login scheme that can link additional data, I think they should need to give you the option of a full refund.

jjulius 4y ago
I agree, but that's one hell of an uphill battle considering the amount of money that would be behind those opposing such laws. Until said laws pass, storing things locally is a valid option for a stopgap despite how cumbersome it might be. Edit: I also have little faith in any legal remedy going far enough. The cat's out of the proverbial bag, too many businesses "depend" on data, and the government certainly enjoys being able to more easily access your data via cloud businesses than having to deal with a different enduser's setup every single time. Not saying we can't make progress, but I'm pessimistic.
t_mann 4y ago
You're right about the backup situation, but I would still say that even just having your personal data in a flat file backed up with OneDrive - which a lot of users probably have set up without even fully realizing - still beats the app-specific cloud for most purposes (both access- and privacy-wise). Just consider the difference that it makes in the mental model of vendor lock-in. And yes, it may not be that common for people to lose their Google account, but that's really just one failure mode of relying on in-app storage. The provider may decide to suddenly put parts of your data behind a paywall (like Slack just did), or may straight up cease to exist. Even if Microsoft were to do something similar to your OneDrive account, you'd still have your local copy and could change your cloud backup provider with very reasonable effort.
jsnell 4y ago
And how long should that obligation exist? Google bought Fitbit in 2019. The article says the Fitbit account system will be supported until 2025. That seems pretty decent compared to the expected lifetime of the hardware? (My 2017 Alta was basically useless in 2020, completely dead in 2021).
- varelse 4y ago
  [dead]
Karellen 4y ago
The thing is, a lot of people own more than one device. Even more people know a couple of people who have devices with some spare space. Wouldn't it be great if we had a way that people could "join" trusted devices to create mutual background backups. So I could pair my laptop with my phone, and each would back up "essential" data for the other. But I could also pair my phone with my significant other, and our phones would also work as backups of each other. Syncing could be done on some kind of schedule, maybe when they're in bluetooth range, or maybe if they find each other on the same LAN. Or maybe they could use cloud storage to transfer E2E encrypted blobs. (i.e. my phone would backup my laptop and my parter's phone, my partner's phone would back up my phone, and my laptop would also back up my phone. If my partner wanted/was willing to also back up my laptop, that would be a separate step, and they would back up each other.) Deciding which data should be considered "essential" is left as an exercise for the implementor :-)
- nradov 4y ago
  In principle you can do most of that with IPFS. The user experience isn't great though, especially when trying to use it as a backup solution for multiple people across multiple platforms. Someone might be able to build a startup around fixing this.
- _emacsomancer_ 4y ago
  Like what Syncthing does?
prepend 4y ago
> It's actually extremely rare for your average person to get locked out of their Google account It’s also extremely rare for an average person’s house to burn down. Or extremely rare for a 500 year flood. Or an asteroid hitting the earth. Should we not prepare for, avoid, and mitigate these risks? It’s not telling people to store flat files in the cloud. It’s encouraging sustainable protocols that decompose to strong flat files in the cloud. Story time is when ynab originally just write their files to a file structure and used Dropbox to sync. Then they switched to saas, charged people a monthly fee and store customer data in their proprietary cloud. One day ynab will go away and so will their data. Their earlier method will last forever because of the portability of flat files. Customer lock in makes companies more money.
- BurritoAlPastor 4y ago
  People are also not really expected to be individually responsible for mitigating flood or fire risk; they buy insurance. People can’t buy insurance for getting locked out of their Google account. We’re currently in a “well it’s your own fault for not owning and furnishing a second house in case the first one burns down” situation for digital property.
  - nyokodo 4y ago
    > People can’t buy insurance for getting locked out of their Google account Maybe they should be able to? I’d purchase that kind of insurance!
    - t_mann 4y ago
      That might actually be interesting, because then there'd be actors who could give Google and the other BigTechs a lot more heat than any individual user can over unjustified account deletions (to avoid having to pay out the insurance premium).
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - Retric 4y ago
anothernewdude 4y ago
Oh no, my old fitness data!
saiya-jin 4y ago
Err, world is not black and white, one can come up with various strategies how to do backups and end up very very fine in 99,99% of the situations, which is perfectly fine for vast majority of use cases. And even giants like Google and Amazon dont guarantee that much above this. You mention laws and thats the core problem and its naive to just rely on them. Corporations are profit-first, bonus-first, and employ progressively more sociopaths as you move up the management hierarchy. This is simple sad fact regardless of industry or country. Those folks see laws as obstacles, and unfortunately often try to game them. The results are basically all the fines big banks face from regulators, financial crises, endless internet privacy issues and so on. People just gaming well intended rules for their own profit. plus re laws - we don't have judiciary hegemony over whole Earth. Corporations move their activities to weakest jurisdictions immediately, ie Ireland for taxes from Europe. Or they do pay minimal taxes in US. DOn't expect privacy to be handled better by default.