5 ms·

I know whenever this happens, a lot of HN-types like to act smug about how "you should have known to not trust a company with your data, do your own backups" B

by hbn 1y ago

I know whenever this happens, a lot of HN-types like to act smug about how "you should have known to not trust a company with your data, do your own backups" But for everyone else (skipping over the fact that you could have a little more compassion to someone who lost decades worth of important, sentimental data), running your own backups is way more work than should be necessary compared to the mainstream solutions. Especially since most people will likely not hit this scenario anyway, it's just a lottery of the unlucky. And honestly why are we just accepting that these organizations sitting on infinitely growing wealth can use it to incentivize us to give us all their data for convenience and otherwise worry-free management of it, and then just lock you out one day based on bad algorithms, and offer next to no customer support to resolve it because they don't want to spend a tiny fraction of their operation budget on a department for that? I'm not sure how you'd enforce regulation on something like that but if we're gonna let big tech run rampant and collect all this data on the population, it seems like the bare minimum to offer a better experience for stuff like this.

anonzzzies 1y ago
[flagged]
- nyc_data_geek1 1y ago
  It is smug because the average person is not a geek running a micro rack in their basement (nor does the average person possess the time, means or expertise to spin up and maintain all such should they even want to). It is smug because, to GP's point, a dismissal of a very real problem with hyper-consolidated markets that allow the most powerful entities on earth to abdicate their responsibility, and foist it upon the people least equipped to handle it, all in the name of "personal responsibility".
  - layer8 1y ago
    The mistake of the OP was to not buy the new drive right away and copy his data locally. No basement rack needed, just a USB hard drive. They wrote about owning multiple drives and having collected data over the course of 30 years, so they weren’t completely nontechnical either.
  - anonzzzies 1y ago
    Aren't the govs that are voting in all over the place on right wing side all for 'personal responsibility' and no gov coddling? But sure, I am absolutely for rules for these companies, having a number to call with a human etc and not actually bring allowed to not offer that because the service is free or cheap and the company very large so no one thinks it will matter. Drives are very cheap these days and it seems he had most of it local but went full cloud.
    - Vaslo 1y ago
      Amazing you bring politics into it. I’m glad the GOP and Trump live rent free in your head so it extends to everything you do.
  - ToucanLoucan 1y ago
    So I definitely agree about being smug. This isn't funny and you can approach this with empathy and understanding for how soul-crushing this is for this person. And also, you do not need a rack of homelab gear to do backups. I have an AV rack (somewhat undermining my point I accept), 16U, bolted to my laundry wall. Within it is a network switch, my ISP's routing gear, my Phillips hue controller, and 3 PCs. One is a dedicated Minecraft box (shut up), one is my universal Ubuntu box for miscellaneous automations + plex, and one is a Windows 10 box that handles my DVR, file shares, and backups. The actual backups themselves are scripts that run nightly and move data from the misc. PCs to the big one, along with some syncthing shares that do the same, and then the lot is backed up offsite with a backup vendor's application. I grant if you were setting this entire setup up from nothing, it would be a decent amount of work. However I also point out, this is all off the shelf batch files and OSS. This is hardly what I would call engineering, and that's by design, I wanted it to very simple. So, big empathy, big understanding, I would give this dude a hug if I could. AND, people should take this as a lesson to not just shove all their shit into a monolith and call it a day because it's cheap and easy.
  - oskarkk 1y ago
    You don't have to be a geek, you don't need a rack, you don't need much time to do this. Just buy some external drive and copy at least something there. We're talking about "30 years of irreplaceable photos and work". Doing a backup one time a year would save 90%+ of that data in case of problems, without any need for technical knowledge or dedicating significant time to this. I agree that the companies should not be allowed to just lock you out of your data like that, but even if there was a strongly enforced law mandating companies to not do this, you still should have some backup. Many things could happen, and doing a simple backup is a very small investment which can save you from losing 30 years of data (even if the risk is very small).
    - karencarits 1y ago
      Getting backups right _is_ difficult and can easily be quite stressful. Yes, having some external drives here and there with files would of course be helpful. But then, should you encrypt them in case of theft? Where to keep them in case of fire? What to do with "old" backups (can I trust the drive to live more than 2 years? 5 years?), copy them over to new drives? But what then with duplicated files? I think having backups in the cloud is currently the best "backup and forget" strategy
      - oskarkk 1y ago
        > Getting backups right _is_ difficult and can easily be quite stressful. My point was that something is much better than nothing, and you don't need 99.999% reliability in your setup to greatly reduce risk that you're exposing yourself to when keeping 30 years of data in only one place. > But then, should you encrypt them in case of theft? Depends on the nature of the data. I guess that most of that 30 years worth of data didn't need encryption, and copying only insensitive data is an option. On the other side, cloud account, or device logged in to the cloud account could be stolen too. > Where to keep them in case of fire? That's irrelevant if we're talking about backing up data stored on cloud service. > What to do with "old" backups (can I trust the drive to live more than 2 years? 5 years?), copy them over to new drives? But what then with duplicated files? Aside from some unlikely issues, yes, drives should last at least a couple of years. In the 5+ year timeframes I think you could just buy a new drive (bigger/cheaper/more reliable than the last as the technology improves). If we're talking about a lazy strategy of backing up the data once a year, even deleting everything on a drive and copying everything again isn't that bad. Better than nothing. > I think having backups in the cloud is currently the best "backup and forget" strategy But we're not talking about having the cloud as a backup. The issue here is having the files only in the cloud, with no backup. For a non-technical person, cloud as a backup is great, but here we have a case where a person had all their data only on the cloud, and then lost access to the cloud. If the cloud was only a backup (or a way to sync/access the data on other devices), but the data would still be present on some private device, there would be no problem.
layer8 1y ago
I agree that what you describe should be done, but until we are there (which likely won't be soon), not trusting big tech and ensuring backup copies of anything important is sound advice.
aaomidi 1y ago
I’ve been supportive of a bill that bans, banning accounts. Only allows you to put them in read only mode.
- sebstefan 1y ago
  If you're Google and you bust someone for having child porn, you shouldn't have to keep hosting child porn. Maybe a mandated period to download your data when you get locked out and put in read-only. Say they have to give you a month. And closing off the visibility of your content to others, obviously
  - aaomidi 1y ago
    Honestly, I'm not going to entertain these hypotheticals. Given that Google has banned an account of a dad for having pictures of his son he was going to share with his doctor under the reasoning of "CSAM" I don't trust Google to be the Judge, Jury, and Executioner.
    - sebstefan 1y ago
      They're not hypotheticals. Google is big. It happens every day. It's reasonable for Google to have automated systems for this, reasonable to deny service arbitrarily, and they should not obligated to provide customer support. They're a bad service in a competitive market for the cloud. So don't use their services. The point being that, assholes or not, while you shouldn't be entitled to their service, you should be entitled to your data, and deleting it arbitrarily should be considered infringing on that.
      - em-bee 1y ago
        reasonable to deny service arbitrarily it's not. and at least in germany you are able to take google to court over this. they should not obligated to provide customer support in the EU the right to speak to a human to resolve issues is mandated by law. so they are obligated to provide customer support.
  - 1y ago
jmull 1y ago
[flagged]
- Vaslo 1y ago
  There’s good advice and there is “being an asshole.” Unfortunately, many HNers don’t read their emails as the recepient does and they sound very preachy and condescending instead of helpful unfortunately(or maybe it’s on purpose.) Your last sentence is exactly what the OP is talking about.
  - jmull 1y ago
    Well, the previous poster had to invent a quote. And you're the one name calling here. Look in the mirror my friend.
  - znpy 1y ago
    I just want to echo the (very good) comment by jmull: > Well, the previous poster had to invent a quote. And you're the one name calling here. Look in the mirror my friend. Yeah, look in the mirror.
atmavatar 1y ago
> And honestly why are we just accepting that these organizations sitting on infinitely growing wealth can use it to incentivize us to give us all their data for convenience and otherwise worry-free management of it, and then just lock you out one day based on bad algorithms, and offer next to no customer support to resolve it because they don't want to spend a tiny fraction of their operation budget on a department for that? We aren't. That's why we tell people not to trust a company with their data. That's like complaining people telling you to avoid a super cheap space heater are elitist and unsympathetic to those with less money, while at the same time decrying that everyone accepts that the manufacturer gets away with selling a space heater that occasionally burns your house down.
- hbn 1y ago
  My point is this is a problem of the of the multi-trillion-dollar corporations, and I think they should be in charge of solving it. Not for every one of the ~6 billion people who use the internet to solve for themselves through preemptive measures and self-inflicted inconvenience. Supposedly our votes are important, and regulation is not impossible.
  - chrisjj 1y ago
    > I think they should be in charge of solving it. They are. Hence their freedom to choose not to.
msgodel 1y ago
Everything you create should be in git or similar. All this value added crap is an unprofessional hack and should be treated as such. The lack of compassion comes from those of us who know how to use computers correctly getting tired of being told to take this stuff seriously.
- rhabarba 1y ago
  > Everything you create should be in git or similar. Everything you create should be on a machine you control, preferably in a house different from the one where you created it. Version control is optional (and Git probably overengineered for your one-man projects, but that's a different discussion).
znpy 1y ago
> "you should have known to not trust a company with your data, do your own backups" Hey, yeah, I'm one of those people, and I'm not backing down. The """cloud""" as solutions of all technical problems ("don't bother with NASes and external drives, just save to the cloud") is mainly dumbing down the average user, and these are the results. If you don't have your data on (at least) a physical drives in your home, you already lost it.
- NoPicklez 1y ago
  You should back down, albeit slightly. There's nothing wrong with the cloud and there's nothing wrong having your own NASes and external drives. The person in question was consolidating from old drives to the cloud, then transferring to new drives, using the cloud as a temporary stopgap before moving to new drives. Seemingly they were trying to do the right thing. Nobody here is saying the cloud is a solution for all technical problems, just like we're not saying NASes and external drives are a complete solution either. The average person doesn't have the technical knowhow to setup and use a NAS, perhaps a single external drive and that is fraught with danger.
OptionOfT 1y ago
Not to mention that companies incessantly push for you to use their services to safeguard your data. Microsoft ENFORCES usage of an online account these days. They tell you that you need to hand over your money to keep your data safe. The explicitly have things like Vault to keep your special documents even safer!
- znpy 1y ago
  > Microsoft ENFORCES usage of an online account these days. Wait until the EU Commission hears about this. It's crazy that we need the EU Commission to talk sense into US companies.
- chrisjj 1y ago
  > Microsoft ENFORCES usage of an online account these days. Untrue. How to Install and Log In to Windows 11 Without a Microsoft Account https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-windows-11-without-microsoft-account https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-windows-11-witho...
1970-01-01 1y ago
>(skipping over the fact that you could have a little more compassion to someone who lost decades worth of important, sentimental data) Someone who lost *access* to decades worth of important, sentimental data. It is extremely likely that 100.000% of their data still exists in its original form. That one word makes a world of difference for my compassion levels. If it exists, access can be restored. My compassion is for the frustration level toward getting a human at MS, which is a different and weirder problem.
- chrisjj 1y ago
  > Someone who lost access to decades worth of important, sentimental data. It is extremely likely that 100.000% of their data still exists in its original form. MS: "Second, we’ll delete Data or Your Content associated with your Microsoft account or will otherwise disassociate it from you and your Microsoft account (unless we are required by law to keep it, return it, or transfer it to you or a third party identified by you). You should have a regular backup plan as Microsoft won’t be able to retrieve Your Content or Data once your account is closed."
JohnFen 1y ago
> And honestly why are we just accepting that these organizations I suspect that's what people who remind others not to trust these services are thinking, and that's why the reminder. If you rely on these services, you are accepting exactly those bad things. We can equally decide not to accept them by not using the services or, at the very least, by considering them unreliable and acting accordingly (such as not allowing important data to exist solely in them).

by hbn 1y ago

anonzzzies 1y ago

[flagged]

nyc_data_geek1 1y ago
It is smug because the average person is not a geek running a micro rack in their basement (nor does the average person possess the time, means or expertise to spin up and maintain all such should they even want to). It is smug because, to GP's point, a dismissal of a very real problem with hyper-consolidated markets that allow the most powerful entities on earth to abdicate their responsibility, and foist it upon the people least equipped to handle it, all in the name of "personal responsibility".
- layer8 1y ago
  The mistake of the OP was to not buy the new drive right away and copy his data locally. No basement rack needed, just a USB hard drive. They wrote about owning multiple drives and having collected data over the course of 30 years, so they weren’t completely nontechnical either.
- anonzzzies 1y ago
  Aren't the govs that are voting in all over the place on right wing side all for 'personal responsibility' and no gov coddling? But sure, I am absolutely for rules for these companies, having a number to call with a human etc and not actually bring allowed to not offer that because the service is free or cheap and the company very large so no one thinks it will matter. Drives are very cheap these days and it seems he had most of it local but went full cloud.
  - Vaslo 1y ago
    Amazing you bring politics into it. I’m glad the GOP and Trump live rent free in your head so it extends to everything you do.
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago
  So I definitely agree about being smug. This isn't funny and you can approach this with empathy and understanding for how soul-crushing this is for this person. And also, you do not need a rack of homelab gear to do backups. I have an AV rack (somewhat undermining my point I accept), 16U, bolted to my laundry wall. Within it is a network switch, my ISP's routing gear, my Phillips hue controller, and 3 PCs. One is a dedicated Minecraft box (shut up), one is my universal Ubuntu box for miscellaneous automations + plex, and one is a Windows 10 box that handles my DVR, file shares, and backups. The actual backups themselves are scripts that run nightly and move data from the misc. PCs to the big one, along with some syncthing shares that do the same, and then the lot is backed up offsite with a backup vendor's application. I grant if you were setting this entire setup up from nothing, it would be a decent amount of work. However I also point out, this is all off the shelf batch files and OSS. This is hardly what I would call engineering, and that's by design, I wanted it to very simple. So, big empathy, big understanding, I would give this dude a hug if I could. AND, people should take this as a lesson to not just shove all their shit into a monolith and call it a day because it's cheap and easy.
- oskarkk 1y ago
  You don't have to be a geek, you don't need a rack, you don't need much time to do this. Just buy some external drive and copy at least something there. We're talking about "30 years of irreplaceable photos and work". Doing a backup one time a year would save 90%+ of that data in case of problems, without any need for technical knowledge or dedicating significant time to this. I agree that the companies should not be allowed to just lock you out of your data like that, but even if there was a strongly enforced law mandating companies to not do this, you still should have some backup. Many things could happen, and doing a simple backup is a very small investment which can save you from losing 30 years of data (even if the risk is very small).
  - karencarits 1y ago
    Getting backups right _is_ difficult and can easily be quite stressful. Yes, having some external drives here and there with files would of course be helpful. But then, should you encrypt them in case of theft? Where to keep them in case of fire? What to do with "old" backups (can I trust the drive to live more than 2 years? 5 years?), copy them over to new drives? But what then with duplicated files? I think having backups in the cloud is currently the best "backup and forget" strategy
    - oskarkk 1y ago
      > Getting backups right _is_ difficult and can easily be quite stressful. My point was that something is much better than nothing, and you don't need 99.999% reliability in your setup to greatly reduce risk that you're exposing yourself to when keeping 30 years of data in only one place. > But then, should you encrypt them in case of theft? Depends on the nature of the data. I guess that most of that 30 years worth of data didn't need encryption, and copying only insensitive data is an option. On the other side, cloud account, or device logged in to the cloud account could be stolen too. > Where to keep them in case of fire? That's irrelevant if we're talking about backing up data stored on cloud service. > What to do with "old" backups (can I trust the drive to live more than 2 years? 5 years?), copy them over to new drives? But what then with duplicated files? Aside from some unlikely issues, yes, drives should last at least a couple of years. In the 5+ year timeframes I think you could just buy a new drive (bigger/cheaper/more reliable than the last as the technology improves). If we're talking about a lazy strategy of backing up the data once a year, even deleting everything on a drive and copying everything again isn't that bad. Better than nothing. > I think having backups in the cloud is currently the best "backup and forget" strategy But we're not talking about having the cloud as a backup. The issue here is having the files only in the cloud, with no backup. For a non-technical person, cloud as a backup is great, but here we have a case where a person had all their data only on the cloud, and then lost access to the cloud. If the cloud was only a backup (or a way to sync/access the data on other devices), but the data would still be present on some private device, there would be no problem.

layer8 1y ago

I agree that what you describe should be done, but until we are there (which likely won't be soon), not trusting big tech and ensuring backup copies of anything important is sound advice.

aaomidi 1y ago

I’ve been supportive of a bill that bans, banning accounts. Only allows you to put them in read only mode.

sebstefan 1y ago
If you're Google and you bust someone for having child porn, you shouldn't have to keep hosting child porn. Maybe a mandated period to download your data when you get locked out and put in read-only. Say they have to give you a month. And closing off the visibility of your content to others, obviously
- aaomidi 1y ago
  Honestly, I'm not going to entertain these hypotheticals. Given that Google has banned an account of a dad for having pictures of his son he was going to share with his doctor under the reasoning of "CSAM" I don't trust Google to be the Judge, Jury, and Executioner.
  - sebstefan 1y ago
    They're not hypotheticals. Google is big. It happens every day. It's reasonable for Google to have automated systems for this, reasonable to deny service arbitrarily, and they should not obligated to provide customer support. They're a bad service in a competitive market for the cloud. So don't use their services. The point being that, assholes or not, while you shouldn't be entitled to their service, you should be entitled to your data, and deleting it arbitrarily should be considered infringing on that.
    - em-bee 1y ago
      reasonable to deny service arbitrarily it's not. and at least in germany you are able to take google to court over this. they should not obligated to provide customer support in the EU the right to speak to a human to resolve issues is mandated by law. so they are obligated to provide customer support.
- 1y ago

jmull 1y ago

[flagged]

Vaslo 1y ago
There’s good advice and there is “being an asshole.” Unfortunately, many HNers don’t read their emails as the recepient does and they sound very preachy and condescending instead of helpful unfortunately(or maybe it’s on purpose.) Your last sentence is exactly what the OP is talking about.
- jmull 1y ago
  Well, the previous poster had to invent a quote. And you're the one name calling here. Look in the mirror my friend.
- znpy 1y ago
  I just want to echo the (very good) comment by jmull: > Well, the previous poster had to invent a quote. And you're the one name calling here. Look in the mirror my friend. Yeah, look in the mirror.

atmavatar 1y ago

> And honestly why are we just accepting that these organizations sitting on infinitely growing wealth can use it to incentivize us to give us all their data for convenience and otherwise worry-free management of it, and then just lock you out one day based on bad algorithms, and offer next to no customer support to resolve it because they don't want to spend a tiny fraction of their operation budget on a department for that? We aren't. That's why we tell people not to trust a company with their data. That's like complaining people telling you to avoid a super cheap space heater are elitist and unsympathetic to those with less money, while at the same time decrying that everyone accepts that the manufacturer gets away with selling a space heater that occasionally burns your house down.

hbn 1y ago
My point is this is a problem of the of the multi-trillion-dollar corporations, and I think they should be in charge of solving it. Not for every one of the ~6 billion people who use the internet to solve for themselves through preemptive measures and self-inflicted inconvenience. Supposedly our votes are important, and regulation is not impossible.
- chrisjj 1y ago
  > I think they should be in charge of solving it. They are. Hence their freedom to choose not to.

msgodel 1y ago

Everything you create should be in git or similar. All this value added crap is an unprofessional hack and should be treated as such. The lack of compassion comes from those of us who know how to use computers correctly getting tired of being told to take this stuff seriously.

rhabarba 1y ago
> Everything you create should be in git or similar. Everything you create should be on a machine you control, preferably in a house different from the one where you created it. Version control is optional (and Git probably overengineered for your one-man projects, but that's a different discussion).

znpy 1y ago

> "you should have known to not trust a company with your data, do your own backups" Hey, yeah, I'm one of those people, and I'm not backing down. The """cloud""" as solutions of all technical problems ("don't bother with NASes and external drives, just save to the cloud") is mainly dumbing down the average user, and these are the results. If you don't have your data on (at least) a physical drives in your home, you already lost it.

NoPicklez 1y ago
You should back down, albeit slightly. There's nothing wrong with the cloud and there's nothing wrong having your own NASes and external drives. The person in question was consolidating from old drives to the cloud, then transferring to new drives, using the cloud as a temporary stopgap before moving to new drives. Seemingly they were trying to do the right thing. Nobody here is saying the cloud is a solution for all technical problems, just like we're not saying NASes and external drives are a complete solution either. The average person doesn't have the technical knowhow to setup and use a NAS, perhaps a single external drive and that is fraught with danger.

OptionOfT 1y ago

Not to mention that companies incessantly push for you to use their services to safeguard your data. Microsoft ENFORCES usage of an online account these days. They tell you that you need to hand over your money to keep your data safe. The explicitly have things like Vault to keep your special documents even safer!

znpy 1y ago
> Microsoft ENFORCES usage of an online account these days. Wait until the EU Commission hears about this. It's crazy that we need the EU Commission to talk sense into US companies.
chrisjj 1y ago
> Microsoft ENFORCES usage of an online account these days. Untrue. How to Install and Log In to Windows 11 Without a Microsoft Account https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-windows-11-without-microsoft-account https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-windows-11-witho...

1970-01-01 1y ago

>(skipping over the fact that you could have a little more compassion to someone who lost decades worth of important, sentimental data) Someone who lost *access* to decades worth of important, sentimental data. It is extremely likely that 100.000% of their data still exists in its original form. That one word makes a world of difference for my compassion levels. If it exists, access can be restored. My compassion is for the frustration level toward getting a human at MS, which is a different and weirder problem.

chrisjj 1y ago
> Someone who lost access to decades worth of important, sentimental data. It is extremely likely that 100.000% of their data still exists in its original form. MS: "Second, we’ll delete Data or Your Content associated with your Microsoft account or will otherwise disassociate it from you and your Microsoft account (unless we are required by law to keep it, return it, or transfer it to you or a third party identified by you). You should have a regular backup plan as Microsoft won’t be able to retrieve Your Content or Data once your account is closed."

JohnFen 1y ago

> And honestly why are we just accepting that these organizations I suspect that's what people who remind others not to trust these services are thinking, and that's why the reminder. If you rely on these services, you are accepting exactly those bad things. We can equally decide not to accept them by not using the services or, at the very least, by considering them unreliable and acting accordingly (such as not allowing important data to exist solely in them).