The truly wild thing about subscription pricing to me is how viscerally I’m against it. I’m not shitting on this business model, I think it makes perfect sense and is probably the only logical way to run a business like this. I’m just saying that everything in our lives is trying so hard to turn everything into a recurring fee that my first reaction to every recurring fee is pure hatred.
Alright, so the amount of data I’d need for pictures is probably the 500GB tier, so $9.99/mo. My first thought is that’s way too expensive, my second thought is that I’m not doing another subscription. My subscription-trauma addled brain will happily justify buying a little server, and a 1TB hard drive, and spending hours configuring them. By the time I’m done, I’ll have spent the equivalent of at least 3 years of the cost of this service, plus tons of my free time, and it will never work exactly right because there’s always going to need to be updates, and sometimes those will break something, and I’ll need to fix it myself.
Cloud storage is something I’m okay paying for. In general, if I want near 100 percent uptime, I’m ok paying for it, because the alternative is making sure it works by myself, and I have much more important shit to do.
I’m ok with subscription cloud storage provided it’s easy to move everything off of it to somewhere else and they don’t make me jump through ridiculous hopes to access it.
I was paying for Google drive until they killed the Back Up and Sync desktop app. The original app let you sync any individual file in any directory, and you could pick and choose how each was synced.
Then they killed that and replaced it with a desktop app they have now that creates a Google partition of sorts that the user can’t enter, shoves all your files in it, and forces you to use the app to manage what files are currently sitting on your own computer.
I got all the rest and I see your issue with wanting to sync only individual files.
But I didn’t quite get what you mean with this: “…that the user can’t enter”.
You can enter and copy/move/edit files… I cannot understand what you meant with that.
Regarding the sync thing, I am not as annoyed by it as much as you seem, and my use case probably was different, but in case it helps somebody what I opted to was to use it as a disk and use tools that work with disks, so in my case although other tools could be used I use FreeFileSync to copy files from the Drive to a local drive and viceversa. Mostly for backup purposes.
I would be tempted to say in some cases it is even better as in the past you needed to to use their APIs or use their tool to setup those specific sync options and now I can use any tool that works with copying/using normal files.
That said… for other environments like a server or similar, then you are back to RClone and API auths or similar to do actions on your drive.
You have to keep it all downloaded and synced or none.
This is me just nitpicking, but you can flag folders/files to be available offline and it will keep a local copy always, but it will be in their drive thingy. So you can access it even when offline but it’s not copied outside their virtual disk. It’s just a right click menu option.
Makes sense. Are there any alternatives which lets you pick and choose which objects to sync on the file level? I didn’t really know that was an option except for finangling rsync with cron jobs or something.
One of my biggest concerns with subscriptions has to do with death. It feels gross to imagine companies just entitling themselves to my bank account after I’m gone, providing no value to anything, until someone comes along and cancels everything. Feels like one last free cash grab that could go on for years. I imagine board members congratulating each other for legally looting a dead man’s corpse.
You’re probably right, but we both know companies would go on for years if nothing intervenes. Then blame it on the dead man when there is no money left.
One of the reasons that I use Google photos is for the automatic backup of pictures I take. I’m working towards self hosting, and I haven’t got to this one yet, but that service is pretty nice. Also, when I’m traveling, I’ll take a handful pictures side by side, and Google will stitch a panorama for me. I spend time snowboarding in the mountains and hiking in tropical areas, and that’s the best way to capture a landscape that I’ve used.
I use Photoprism. It is sufficient, amazing even for what it is, but there’s a definite curve to getting it set up properly and there’s some babysitting involved to make sure everything keeps working.
I’m just saying that everything in our lives is trying so hard to turn everything into a recurring fee that my first reaction to every recurring fee is pure hatred.
But OTOH, it has ~always been that everything semi-worthwhile in our loves has been a recurring cost.
Food, sex, children, relationships, even things luxury/benign such as cars which are often mistaken for a one-time payment but really are not.
The truly wild thing about subscription pricing to me is how viscerally I’m against it. I’m not shitting on this business model, I think it makes perfect sense and is probably the only logical way to run a business like this. I’m just saying that everything in our lives is trying so hard to turn everything into a recurring fee that my first reaction to every recurring fee is pure hatred.
Alright, so the amount of data I’d need for pictures is probably the 500GB tier, so $9.99/mo. My first thought is that’s way too expensive, my second thought is that I’m not doing another subscription. My subscription-trauma addled brain will happily justify buying a little server, and a 1TB hard drive, and spending hours configuring them. By the time I’m done, I’ll have spent the equivalent of at least 3 years of the cost of this service, plus tons of my free time, and it will never work exactly right because there’s always going to need to be updates, and sometimes those will break something, and I’ll need to fix it myself.
Anyway, it looks cool though.
Cloud storage is something I’m okay paying for. In general, if I want near 100 percent uptime, I’m ok paying for it, because the alternative is making sure it works by myself, and I have much more important shit to do.
I’m ok with subscription cloud storage provided it’s easy to move everything off of it to somewhere else and they don’t make me jump through ridiculous hopes to access it.
I was paying for Google drive until they killed the Back Up and Sync desktop app. The original app let you sync any individual file in any directory, and you could pick and choose how each was synced.
Then they killed that and replaced it with a desktop app they have now that creates a Google partition of sorts that the user can’t enter, shoves all your files in it, and forces you to use the app to manage what files are currently sitting on your own computer.
I got all the rest and I see your issue with wanting to sync only individual files. But I didn’t quite get what you mean with this: “…that the user can’t enter”. You can enter and copy/move/edit files… I cannot understand what you meant with that.
Regarding the sync thing, I am not as annoyed by it as much as you seem, and my use case probably was different, but in case it helps somebody what I opted to was to use it as a disk and use tools that work with disks, so in my case although other tools could be used I use FreeFileSync to copy files from the Drive to a local drive and viceversa. Mostly for backup purposes.
I would be tempted to say in some cases it is even better as in the past you needed to to use their APIs or use their tool to setup those specific sync options and now I can use any tool that works with copying/using normal files.
That said… for other environments like a server or similar, then you are back to RClone and API auths or similar to do actions on your drive.
This is me just nitpicking, but you can flag folders/files to be available offline and it will keep a local copy always, but it will be in their drive thingy. So you can access it even when offline but it’s not copied outside their virtual disk. It’s just a right click menu option.
Makes sense. Are there any alternatives which lets you pick and choose which objects to sync on the file level? I didn’t really know that was an option except for finangling rsync with cron jobs or something.
One of my biggest concerns with subscriptions has to do with death. It feels gross to imagine companies just entitling themselves to my bank account after I’m gone, providing no value to anything, until someone comes along and cancels everything. Feels like one last free cash grab that could go on for years. I imagine board members congratulating each other for legally looting a dead man’s corpse.
That’s freaky. Never thought of that.
I mean… it’s not great but unless you don’t have family or they are not aware of those accounts that will not last years.
You’re probably right, but we both know companies would go on for years if nothing intervenes. Then blame it on the dead man when there is no money left.
One of the reasons that I use Google photos is for the automatic backup of pictures I take. I’m working towards self hosting, and I haven’t got to this one yet, but that service is pretty nice. Also, when I’m traveling, I’ll take a handful pictures side by side, and Google will stitch a panorama for me. I spend time snowboarding in the mountains and hiking in tropical areas, and that’s the best way to capture a landscape that I’ve used.
I use Photoprism. It is sufficient, amazing even for what it is, but there’s a definite curve to getting it set up properly and there’s some babysitting involved to make sure everything keeps working.
I will have to look into that as an option. Always open to alternatives.
GCam and photospheres! I’m so mad they dropped photospheres on the Pixel 8 line, it’s so good for travel landscapes.
But OTOH, it has ~always been that everything semi-worthwhile in our loves has been a recurring cost.
Food, sex, children, relationships, even things luxury/benign such as cars which are often mistaken for a one-time payment but really are not.
https://i.redd.it/bekphnqftcb41.jpg