36 ms·

My Dad left us 30 TB of data when he passed. I trimmed it down to 2 TB and tried to use Google's desktop sync app to upload it to cloud. It ran on my work compu

My Dad left us 30 TB of data when he passed. I trimmed it down to 2 TB and tried to use Google's desktop sync app to upload it to cloud. It ran on my work computer during COVID for 8 months straight before finishing. When I tried to back up that and my other data to a hard drive, Google takeout consistently failed, downloading consistently failed. I went back and forth with support for months with no solution. Finally I found rclone and was done in a couple days.

tomcam 3y ago
> Google takeout consistently failed, downloading consistently failed I get extra angry about situations like this. I have paid Google many thousands of dollars over the years for their services. I just assume that one of the fundamentals of a company like that would be handling large files even if it’s for a fairly small percentage of customers. I get that their feature set is limited. I kind of get that they don’t provide much support. But for the many compromises I make with a company that size, I feel like semi-competent engineering should be one of the few benefits I get besides low price and high availability.
- firtoz 3y ago
  In the past few years it has been a leech of brain power that's optimized itself into producing nothing of value except demos that get abandoned immediately. From what I read, they seem to have managers and executives with bad incentives and too much power. So it seems that it doesn't really matter how competent the engineer is, their work goes into numerous black holes in the end.
  - harshreality 3y ago
    > We should also remember how a foolish and willful ignorance of the superpower of rewards caused Soviet communists to get their final result, as described by one employee: “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.” Perhaps the most important rule in management is “Get the incentives right.” -- Charlie Munger, Poor Charlie's Almanack ch. 11, The Psychology of Human Misjudgment (principle #1)
- rakoo 3y ago
  Devil's advocate: egress prices are always extremely high, so if you use their service that doesn't transfer the cost over to you it means it has been factored in that you won't be downloading that much. Making obstacles to actually doing it is, for them, the cost-effective way, and if you want to have an actual full access you're supposed to use their cloud storage. But that's only one possible reasoning.
- graemep 3y ago
  Why would you expect that? It is not profitable to put extra work into serving a small proportion of customers. It is also not profitable to put work into helping customers stop using your services. It is something providers do to keep regulators off their back. They are not going to put money into making it work well.
  - fauigerzigerk 3y ago
    You can't create a product or service where every single feature is profitable on its own. If a feature exists, I expect it to work.
    - graemep 3y ago
      If a feature does not increase profits why would you put money into developing and maintaining it?
      - fauigerzigerk 3y ago
        A feature that makes it easier to switch will also make it less risky to sign up in the first place. Giving away a feature that is a competitor's cash cow could weaken that competitor's stranglehold on customers you want to connect with or drive the competitor out of business. At a particular point in time, increasing market share could be more important for a company than making a profit. It could be culturally uncommon to charge for some essential feature (say bank accounts), but without that feature you wouldn't be able to upsell customers on other features (credit cards, mortgages). Ad funded companies give away features and entire services for free in order to be more attractive for ad customers. Of course, if a feature is bad for a company in every conceivable direct and indirect way, even in combination with other features, now and in the future, under any and all circumstances, it would not introduce that feature at all. Introducing a completely broken feature is unlikely to make much sense. Introducing lots of low quality features that make the product feel flaky but "full featured" could make some sense unfortunately.
        3y ago
Erratic6576 3y ago
Inability to download from the cloud is happening to me every with every provider. Proton from the web, OneDrive Cryptomator vault through Cyberduck. I’ll have to use rclone, I guess
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

tomcam 3y ago

> Google takeout consistently failed, downloading consistently failed I get extra angry about situations like this. I have paid Google many thousands of dollars over the years for their services. I just assume that one of the fundamentals of a company like that would be handling large files even if it’s for a fairly small percentage of customers. I get that their feature set is limited. I kind of get that they don’t provide much support. But for the many compromises I make with a company that size, I feel like semi-competent engineering should be one of the few benefits I get besides low price and high availability.

firtoz 3y ago
In the past few years it has been a leech of brain power that's optimized itself into producing nothing of value except demos that get abandoned immediately. From what I read, they seem to have managers and executives with bad incentives and too much power. So it seems that it doesn't really matter how competent the engineer is, their work goes into numerous black holes in the end.
- harshreality 3y ago
  > We should also remember how a foolish and willful ignorance of the superpower of rewards caused Soviet communists to get their final result, as described by one employee: “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.” Perhaps the most important rule in management is “Get the incentives right.” -- Charlie Munger, Poor Charlie's Almanack ch. 11, The Psychology of Human Misjudgment (principle #1)
rakoo 3y ago
Devil's advocate: egress prices are always extremely high, so if you use their service that doesn't transfer the cost over to you it means it has been factored in that you won't be downloading that much. Making obstacles to actually doing it is, for them, the cost-effective way, and if you want to have an actual full access you're supposed to use their cloud storage. But that's only one possible reasoning.
graemep 3y ago
Why would you expect that? It is not profitable to put extra work into serving a small proportion of customers. It is also not profitable to put work into helping customers stop using your services. It is something providers do to keep regulators off their back. They are not going to put money into making it work well.
- fauigerzigerk 3y ago
  You can't create a product or service where every single feature is profitable on its own. If a feature exists, I expect it to work.
  - graemep 3y ago
    If a feature does not increase profits why would you put money into developing and maintaining it?
    - fauigerzigerk 3y ago
      A feature that makes it easier to switch will also make it less risky to sign up in the first place. Giving away a feature that is a competitor's cash cow could weaken that competitor's stranglehold on customers you want to connect with or drive the competitor out of business. At a particular point in time, increasing market share could be more important for a company than making a profit. It could be culturally uncommon to charge for some essential feature (say bank accounts), but without that feature you wouldn't be able to upsell customers on other features (credit cards, mortgages). Ad funded companies give away features and entire services for free in order to be more attractive for ad customers. Of course, if a feature is bad for a company in every conceivable direct and indirect way, even in combination with other features, now and in the future, under any and all circumstances, it would not introduce that feature at all. Introducing a completely broken feature is unlikely to make much sense. Introducing lots of low quality features that make the product feel flaky but "full featured" could make some sense unfortunately.
      - 3y ago

Erratic6576 3y ago

Inability to download from the cloud is happening to me every with every provider. Proton from the web, OneDrive Cryptomator vault through Cyberduck. I’ll have to use rclone, I guess

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]