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There's a whole raft of home automation devices, printers, etc. that will become bricks if certain cloud servers are turned off. Personally I think this fad wi

by api 12y ago

There's a whole raft of home automation devices, printers, etc. that will become bricks if certain cloud servers are turned off. Personally I think this fad will crash and burn, but it will take many rounds of consumer disappointment and flagrant disregard like you describe. Eventually "you control it" will become a selling point.

ghaff 12y ago
For the most part, home automation is a horrible mess right now with incompatible proprietary systems that mostly don't even solve any particular problem. That said, there's a definite tradeoff between having devices that just work and maintaining control over all the information storage and information flows. In the case of the parent comment, automatically backing up photos is actually a great feature for a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't back them up at all. But it's not so good when the service shuts down or your account gets hacked (as in the celebrity photos this past year).
- scholia 12y ago
  There's a difference between doing it out of self-interest (Kodak, Apple) and providing a user service. It would be perfectly possible to provide automatic backups of photos via the user's choice of cloud (Dropbox, OneDrive etc) with the cloud service copying them to the user's chosen personal storage (PC, NAS, whatever). That would work except for the people who don't and/or won't have any personal storage. However, if people won't look after their own data, I'm unlikely to be too sad when they lose it.
  - ghaff 12y ago
    >However, if people won't look after their own data, I'm unlikely to be too sad when they lose it. I'm going to disagree with you on that. This piece that John Gruber wrote after the celebrity iCloud account hack is spot on IMO: http://daringfireball.net/2014/09/security_tradeoffs http://daringfireball.net/2014/09/security_tradeoffs "Over the years I’ve received numerous emails from past and former Genius Bar support staff, telling similar stories of heartbreak. Customer comes in, their iPhone completely broken, or lost, or stolen, and they had precious photos and videos on it. The birth of a child. The last vacation they ever took with a beloved spouse who has since passed away. Did they ever back up their iPhone to a Mac or PC with iTunes? No. In many cases they don’t even know what “iTunes on a PC” even means. Or maybe they connected the iPhone to iTunes once, the day they bought it and needed to activate it, and then never again." For many people it honestly is a choice between an automated cloud service and going without a safety net at all. Do I personally depend on a cloud provider when I can avoid it? I try not to with anything I really care about. I use cloud providers but have plenty of my own backup systems as well. But I'm not the typical consumer.
    - gaius 12y ago
      I like a deal where you pay a fee and get a service. The "free" stuff can vanish on a whim.
      - ghaff 12y ago
        While paying for a service gives one more confidence and, if it's a large company, I'd be surprised if they just shut things down overnight, you don't really have meaningful recourse if they just go belly up or just make a really bad IT mistake. Ideally, use multiple storage locations--private and hosted. With respect to the parent comment about Kodak, they actually transferred things to Shutterfly and photos supposedly did not just go away: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/05/business/la-fi-tech-savvy-shutterfly-20120705 http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/05/business/la-fi-tech-... This also wasn't really a "free" service as it was supposedly a feature you got with the camera.
    - scholia 12y ago
      You're not actually disagreeing with me. I didn't say anything against cloud services, only that they could be set up to benefit users rather than suppliers. However, if people are too lame-brained to look after their own data, then I still won't feel sorry if they lose it. You can feel sorry if you want, but it won't make the tiniest bit of difference.
nostrademons 12y ago
It's happening already with early adopters. My brother-in-law just bought a NAS that markets itself as "Your own personal cloud" - it's an 8TB hard disk that plugs into Ethernet (or wireless), is available from every computer connected to the network, and is also available (encrypted) across the public Internet from computers that were authorized on the home intranet.
- scholia 12y ago
  PogoPlug and CloudPlug go back to 2009....

by api 12y ago

ghaff 12y ago

For the most part, home automation is a horrible mess right now with incompatible proprietary systems that mostly don't even solve any particular problem. That said, there's a definite tradeoff between having devices that just work and maintaining control over all the information storage and information flows. In the case of the parent comment, automatically backing up photos is actually a great feature for a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't back them up at all. But it's not so good when the service shuts down or your account gets hacked (as in the celebrity photos this past year).

scholia 12y ago
There's a difference between doing it out of self-interest (Kodak, Apple) and providing a user service. It would be perfectly possible to provide automatic backups of photos via the user's choice of cloud (Dropbox, OneDrive etc) with the cloud service copying them to the user's chosen personal storage (PC, NAS, whatever). That would work except for the people who don't and/or won't have any personal storage. However, if people won't look after their own data, I'm unlikely to be too sad when they lose it.
- ghaff 12y ago
  >However, if people won't look after their own data, I'm unlikely to be too sad when they lose it. I'm going to disagree with you on that. This piece that John Gruber wrote after the celebrity iCloud account hack is spot on IMO: http://daringfireball.net/2014/09/security_tradeoffs http://daringfireball.net/2014/09/security_tradeoffs "Over the years I’ve received numerous emails from past and former Genius Bar support staff, telling similar stories of heartbreak. Customer comes in, their iPhone completely broken, or lost, or stolen, and they had precious photos and videos on it. The birth of a child. The last vacation they ever took with a beloved spouse who has since passed away. Did they ever back up their iPhone to a Mac or PC with iTunes? No. In many cases they don’t even know what “iTunes on a PC” even means. Or maybe they connected the iPhone to iTunes once, the day they bought it and needed to activate it, and then never again." For many people it honestly is a choice between an automated cloud service and going without a safety net at all. Do I personally depend on a cloud provider when I can avoid it? I try not to with anything I really care about. I use cloud providers but have plenty of my own backup systems as well. But I'm not the typical consumer.
  - gaius 12y ago
    I like a deal where you pay a fee and get a service. The "free" stuff can vanish on a whim.
    - ghaff 12y ago
      While paying for a service gives one more confidence and, if it's a large company, I'd be surprised if they just shut things down overnight, you don't really have meaningful recourse if they just go belly up or just make a really bad IT mistake. Ideally, use multiple storage locations--private and hosted. With respect to the parent comment about Kodak, they actually transferred things to Shutterfly and photos supposedly did not just go away: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/05/business/la-fi-tech-savvy-shutterfly-20120705 http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/05/business/la-fi-tech-... This also wasn't really a "free" service as it was supposedly a feature you got with the camera.
  - scholia 12y ago
    You're not actually disagreeing with me. I didn't say anything against cloud services, only that they could be set up to benefit users rather than suppliers. However, if people are too lame-brained to look after their own data, then I still won't feel sorry if they lose it. You can feel sorry if you want, but it won't make the tiniest bit of difference.

nostrademons 12y ago

It's happening already with early adopters. My brother-in-law just bought a NAS that markets itself as "Your own personal cloud" - it's an 8TB hard disk that plugs into Ethernet (or wireless), is available from every computer connected to the network, and is also available (encrypted) across the public Internet from computers that were authorized on the home intranet.

scholia 12y ago
PogoPlug and CloudPlug go back to 2009....