
Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers - pjungwir
https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/10/05/recipes/
======
ex3xu
Another even more egregious example -- around 10 or so years ago, I was a big
proponent of the writing website Urbis. It was a site where you could submit a
piece of writing and get feedback from other users. You can still see its
activity on the Wayback Machine. It was an interesting site still without
equal as far as I can tell.

From what I understand, one day, the creator decided that the site wasn't
making him any money and shut it all down. I foolishly didn't back anything up
and all my prose was gone. Granted, my teenage writing wasn't about to win any
awards or woo any publishers. But some of the stuff I wrote was meaningful
reflections on experiences at the time, meticulously edited and reviewed, and
I still wish I would have been able to read them now.

What really irks me is that all he had to do was give me one day and I would
have been able to save all my stuff. I have very little sympathy for any
company that does anything like what Rachel describes here.

~~~
corey_moncure
Did you at least get your money back?

~~~
leetcrew
i'm assuming it was an ad supported service.

~~~
tlrobinson
I'm assuming (maybe incorrectly) that was corey_moncure's point.

------
irrational
This is why I don't trust my own videos/photos/documents/notes/etc. to "the
cloud". How many examples like this have there been where peoples stuff just
disappears one day with no way to bring it back? More than I can count.

Though, saying I don't trust my files to the cloud is not the same as saying I
don't use the cloud. I keep two copies of all of my files in 2 physical
location. However, both of those physical location are within 10 miles of each
other, so I also mirror everything to the cloud. That is, I always have 3
copies of all of my files, 2 in physical location and 1 in the cloud.

I know so many people that have all of their important videos and photos in
one location (their phone, the cloud, a hard drive in a drawer, etc.) I can't
imagine how they sleep at night knowing everything could go poof at any time.
I've tried explaining this to some of them, but they think I'm paranoid.

~~~
tzs
I need to add cloud mirroring. What cloud service are you using?

I was about to give Backblaze Personal a try, but stopped because I don't like
how they handle encryption. If I'm understanding their site correctly,
restoring requires giving them your key. I'd prefer something where decrypting
for restoration is client side.

I'm currently contemplating Backblaze B2 or Amazon Glacier using Arq or
Duplicati[1] or something like that. (Or maybe using something I write myself
which can better adapt to my specific needs).

Also eyeing OneDrive, since I have 1 TB of that from my Office 365
subscription, and am only using a whopping 300 MB of it.

Hmmm...could I make a large disk image and store the .dmg file on OneDrive,
and then mount that image and use it as a Time Machine volume, thereby getting
a cloud Time Machine backup?

[1] or duplicity or duplicacy...I'm not sure which of the three similarly
named backup programs I'm thinking of!

Edit: looks like the answer to that last question is no. Time Machine does not
seem to allow using a mounted image as a Time Machine volume.

~~~
voltagex_
Arq goes to OneDrive too. Just remember to exclude the Arq files from files
that are downloaded by default if you're running the client. I'd look at B2 as
well, but for the few terabytes I'd use it for it's a bit expensive with the
plummeting Australian Dollar.

~~~
uptown
"Just remember to exclude the Arq files from files that are downloaded by
default if you're running the client."

Funny you mention that. I'd been trying to figure out why my disks were
running out of space. Turns out my Amazon Drive desktop client was syncing the
encrypted Arq files back to my laptop, then those were being fed back into the
Arq backup set. You can imagine how quickly that spins out of control space-
requirements-wise.

------
JoblessWonder
This reminds me of the issue that came up recently with Twitter (I think?) re-
using image IDs that were very old. A lot of professional sports teams ended
up with very odd/cryptic posts.

Here is an article with __NSFW __examples:[https://deadspin.com/this-is-
probably-how-the-cubs-ended-up-...](https://deadspin.com/this-is-probably-how-
the-cubs-ended-up-with-porn-in-an-1829312053)

~~~
emayljames
Thanks, I laughed very much at that article.

------
commandlinefan
> someone who really gave a damn got their hands dirty

Although this person is the hero of the story, I feel obligated to point out
that in today's JIRA-driven "what have you done for me lately" close-the-
stories what's-your-velocity we're-about-to-downsize-so-you'd-better-prove-
you're-valuable culture of "efficiency", the person who did this either had a
LOT of job security (as in, compromising photos of the CEO in a public
bathhouse job security) or did this on their own time while spending their
"working hours" closing tickets and attending conference calls.

~~~
ComputerGuru
I’ve never worked at companies where using Jira was synonymous with bug
quantity over quality. There will always be buglets, bugs, Bugs, and then
BUGS.

On the flip side, every once in a while in the fish-shell GitHub repo we get
an idiot that files an issue titled “is this even maintained?” because there
is a non-zero number of opened issues (or I file a bug on GH and the the repo
owner closes it immediately as “will revisit later” so the issue count doesn’t
go up).

It’s not a technology problem. It’s a people problem.

~~~
userbinator
_On the flip side, every once in a while in the fish-shell GitHub repo we get
an idiot that files an issue titled “is this even maintained?” because there
is a non-zero number of opened issues (or I file a bug on GH and the the repo
owner closes it immediately as “will revisit later” so the issue count doesn’t
go up)._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law)

------
anigbrowl
Add to this youTube's annoying habit of leaving placeholders for deleted
videos in my playlists but not telling me what it is that got removed, thus
preventing me from ever finding it again. I fail to see what purpose is served
by deleting the metadata as well as the possibly-copyright-infringing content.

~~~
dabernathy89
You can always almost find out by just Googling the video ID, especially if
it's been submitted to Reddit or a similar link sharing site.

------
domador
Sounds like another outrageous case of digital sharecropping, where the value
of the service was primarily provided by the users and the community they
formed, yet such value was not respected, and people's work--a cherished part
of their lives--was casually thrown away.

My more noble and magnanimous side would wish that unnamed service's owners
and developers success in the face of such an awful mistake, while my harsher
side feels like failure would serve them right for not respecting their users
and not valuing things that should be valued.

~~~
itronitron
Maybe we can file a patent application for a business process that discovers
product features by learning behaviors within an online community. Even if we
have to narrow the claims to product features that alienate the community I
think we would still be able to find investors.

Full disclosure >> _posting this here to establish prior art_

------
mgkimsal
> they didn't want to pay for storing all of those recipe and cooking videos
> twice...videos are big and space is expensive...

And yet... from people who never pay the bills for anything, all I ever hear
is 'space is cheap, computing is cheap, blah blah blah'. It's all 'cheap'
until you have to pay for it.

~~~
fossuser
In this case they destroyed the company instead of just saying 'space is
cheap' and paying for it.

It isn't free, but it's certainly cheaper than killing your entire company.

~~~
saagarjha
Well, they clearly didn’t realize that they would end up deleting their
original data because they had tried to skimp on storage…

~~~
fossuser
I think that's the point though - you never realize this kind of failure until
it's too late. That's why you're better off biasing towards just paying for
space and being careful with added complexity unless you really need it.

Being cheap about this is just likely to lead to more bugs and cost in
debugging later anyway. There are tradeoffs and exceptions, but there's a
reason the saying exists.

~~~
myhf
It's not just about the cost of file storage. Storing information can be a
legal liability.

This is why businesses that deal with information need staff who are able to
reason about the lifecycle of information.

~~~
fossuser
True, but in this case they were storing what was the core value of the site
and what the users were using the site for. It’d be different if they were
just collecting all PII forever because they didn’t want to think about it.

------
castlecrasher2
>Even inside the company, the internal tech support is essentially gaslighting
the employees who report this problem, by saying things like "it never
existed"

It's mind-boggling that this happens but having experienced it myself, it
sucks. Attempting to address an issue that sure seems to be due to another
team's system is already difficult, so when they respond "it's not us" you're
not only left holding the bag but questioning yourself for doubting that
system.

~~~
perl4ever
Some companies are caught in a cycle where they're not charging enough to
their customers, much less enough for tech support, and as a result their
policy seems to be to frustrate you as much as possible by denying everything
if you contact them with problems, while refunding you store credit if you
persist. Please send photos - you send photos - "we don't see anything wrong."
A refund doesn't actually solve the issue!

Obviously, sympathy is limited for a free service, but I've encountered this
with a paid service. And a few weeks later they announced broad based price
increases, which made for a clearly implied backstory. Not enough money for
labor costs.

------
farnsworth
Anyone know what product she's referring to?

~~~
floatingatoll
Dear HN,

This post goes out of its way to avoid naming the site in question.

If you know the answer to the above question, think carefully before providing
that name here or anywhere. Ask yourself how invoking their name specifically
contributes value to this story. Ask yourself why you consider it right to
shame them by name, when OP did not consider it right to do so.

If you can’t think of a reason that positively improves the world for us all,
and all that you’ve got is “we should hold them up as an example for others to
avoid”, this post already does so and without doxxing them.

If you truly feel that it’s necessary, proceed, but I think honoring the
author’s clear intention to avoid naming them is the appropriate decision here
as well.

~~~
tetrazine
Hmmm. Inclined to agree if you replace the company in this argument with a
person.

Very disinclined in actuality, since this is a company providing a service to
people who have handed over custody of their personal data (It sounds like
very high-value data! Cooking videos aren't easy to make!) under the
assumption that they will get something out of the deal, i.e., the videos
would be hosted and they would be warned if they were going to be deleted (or
at least apologized to if they were deleted by accident and not lied to).

>>> If you can’t think of a reason that positively improves the world for us
all, and all that you’ve got is “we should hold them up as an example for
others to avoid”, this post already does so and without doxxing them.

Hmm, how about "we should hold them up as an example for _users_ to avoid".

Doxxing doesn't exist for corporations, it only exists for individual people.
The proper term of art here is whistleblowing or journalism. And the reason
the author avoided mentioning the company name is probably to cover someone's
ass who signed an NDA.

~~~
brennebeck
Yeah, generally agree with all this. I don’t think we need to shame them, as
the gp initially mentions. But I personally have an interest in understanding
the exact issue, seeing the response, etc. I.e. I believe there’s value in
knowing the company, the actual incident, and so on.

------
kbenson
This is reminiscent of the Reply All podcast's episode about a photo storage
service that had major problems. If i recall correctly, _some_ photos in that
story were actually recovered, but it took a while.

...Okay, I did a little looking, and the followup to this episode was about a
month later[2], and actually some pictures were able to be recovered after
another company bought out the first and tried to save the photos. In any
case, it's an interesting case study of an incident that shares someof the
same themes.

1: [https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/71-the-picture-
taker#e...](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/71-the-picture-
taker#episode-player)

2: [https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/77-the-grand-
tapestry-...](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/77-the-grand-tapestry-of-
pepe#episode-player)

------
nkrisc
Remember: your users are people, not faceless lab rats.

------
SZJX
Not sure if the "moments" stuff is that "14-years-old". I'm not sure about the
Snapchat implementation but the things on Instagram and FB etc. surely have
people of all ages using them. Though yeah that's not the main point of the
article I know.

------
chungy
Can someone explain what this "moments" concept is? I'm unfamiliar.

------
garganzol
I spotted Facebook does this on more than several occasions. "Videos are big
and space is expensive and we are cheap". Not only videos, but images would
also spontaneously go for some users.

------
ap46
I make it a point to Dropbox critical files(non-media) & do monthly backups of
my phone & Mac to 2 physical drives. I'd love for something which does this
daily of specific folders on my phone & Mac & makes sure there are no
duplicates etc. And then on a monthly basis archive them to 2 or more
different cloud storage vendors.

------
aaaaaaaaaab
Daily reminder that there’s no “cloud”, just other people’s computers.

------
lifeisstillgood
Surely there (should be) a duty of care over other people's data - and the
loss here is actionable and costly.

I am a great believer in regulation through being sued to smithereens

------
noonespecial
Just another reminder that if its not on _your_ disk drives(1), you don't have
it.

(1) Yes, that is plural.

------
gammateam
oof gaslighting

------
cuddlecake
That's sad

