I just spent the last few weeks figuring out how to solve this problem for myself after running out of space on my free Google plan, so here goes.. I do have a NAS at home, so I was basically trying to move my backup from Google Cloud to my local NAS. Another consideration was that my wife should be able to use the solution so it needed to be simple and hands-off.
Probably the most difficult to solve for is Google Photos. Google offers 15 GB, and this gets filled up really fast if you take a lot of photos and videos. I don't, but still with every phone upgrade I've tried to move all files over to my new device, which results in space running out quite quickly. On top of that, Photos is actually _really_ nice. It works seamlessly, and offers features like facial recognition out of the box.
Anyway, I tried 3 different options - Nextcloud, Syncthing, and Immich.
Nextcloud was a little too complicated to setup, even with docker. Wasn't impressed by it.
Syncthing had an issue with Android app support. I think there are a couple of forks, but I didn't want to rely on that.
Immich was what I finally settled on. It is photos/videos specific, so doesn't work as a general purpose backup but I was more than happy just solving for this. My Google storage was being used roughly half and half by Email and Photos. Solving for half was good enough! On the plus side, Immich is a really impressive Google Photos replacement, and behaves almost exactly the same as the Google app, and has advanced features like facial recognition, dupe detection etc.
For email, contacts, SMS etc, I'm still relying on native Google backup.
Finally, there was Whatsapp. I had disabled Google backup a while ago, but wanted to preserve the photos from it. For that, I configured Immich to sync the whatsapp images folder with my library, and that's been working perfectly well.
Oh man, do I have fond memories of developing on feature phones!
Started wayyy back in 2007, and was a cofounder of a startup that made popular J2ME games available for free to people by wrapping it in our proprietary ad serving software. We launched more or less the same time that AbMob did, invented more or less the same stack (ad delivery to mobile phones), but we focussed on the product (games) whereas they focussed on the platform (ad delivery). A few years later AdMob was acquired for mega $$$ by Google, whereas we just kind of limped along and died a slow, natural death! Many years later I discovered that my cofounder just let our 4 letter domain expire (www.hovr.com) and I think it's up for sale now :(
Also remember developing games on the BREW platform by Qualcomm, circa 2005. Whereas I was in India which mostly had GSM J2ME phones, BREW was much more popular on North American CDMA handsets. I, along with a friend, developed one of the first real-time multiplayer games called Blingster Battle, which was on top of Verizon's charts for a brief period of time! Truly groundbreaking stuff at that time..
The most amazing bit, though, was when we made some BREW apps around 2013. By then iOS and Android had firmly taken over the smartphone market, and all the cool kids were downloading apps/games on them. However there was a very significant portion of the market - primarily composed of the elderly - who were still hanging on to their old CDMA feature phones and were still interested in buying new apps. We made a couple of quiz types games, that actually generated a couple of thousand dollars in revenue every month till last year, until Qualcomm finally pulled the plug on BREW!
> I, along with a friend, developed one of the first real-time multiplayer games called Blingster Battle, which was on top of Verizon's charts for a brief period of time! Truly groundbreaking stuff at that time..
Impressive - how did you manage to run real-time multiplayer on that technology?
The game was initially developed as a single-player game (kind of like Tetris). Then to make it multiplayer the entire session management and messaging was moved to a third-party service (it was called electroserver, IIRC). Don't really remember the details now unfortunately!
Curious to see how this plays out in a country like mine (India) where the government loves [1] to shut off Internet access on the flimsiest of excuses. Everything from entire states (like Kashmir), to few localities (farmer protests around Delhi) have had their mobile Internet access switched off because the government likes to curtail communication when it suits them.
Curious about this as well. The portal shows target delivery by 2022 when I apply to pre-order for an address in Kolkata. They will probably have to revisit the pricing model based on the local economy. But yeah, I'm worried whether the current govt will even allow such devices to be imported given they want a tighter control over the internet.
On the other hand, I believe this kind of connectivity will be extremely beneficial for cities such as Kolkata which suffer due to lack of proper infrastructure (and of course, lack of political will). I would love to see a future when I can move back to Kolkata and work with the same latency to servers in NorAM.
Musk has quite a bit of money invested in China, so it will be more interesting what he does when China wants to integrate Starlink into the great firewall.
In the context of startups, speed definitely does matter. Reminds me of something PG used to say at YC - "if at some point you don't feel ashamed of what you released, then you released it too late" (paraphrasing).
> Why “should I make my lifestyle worse” when development in India, China, and Africa is going to increase global CO2 output by multiples of the entire output of the US and EU combined?
Because you are already producing 10x [1] the amount of CO2 that a person in India is.
This article is really informative, and makes me feel proud to be an Indian. Medical care really is one of those things that no person should have to beg or borrow for, in a civil society. We're still not there yet as a country, but the signs are positive.
FWIW, I'm relatively well off and have medical insurance, but the cost is absolutely negligible compared to what I hear is prevalent in the US - about $10 / month.
It's probably just my bad luck, but I've had three surgeries in the last 10 years - an appendectomy, an ACL replacement, and a septoplasty. Each one of these was done in highly regarded (and expensive) hospitals in Delhi - Apollo, Max, and Fortis. Each time I walked out of the hospital without paying a single dime. I just had to show my insurance card, and the entire stay was cashless. In fact, after my last surgery I realised that I could have even been reimbursed for my medication post surgery if I'd kept the receipts (which I unfortunately didn't).
I lived in India for about 5 years and worked in the healthcare space with all the hospitals you mention. So here's my take:-
India has amazing "private" hospitals if you compare the doctors and the equipment they use.
India also has the worst "private" hospitals if you compare the hospital support staff specially nurses. Most of them (not all) nurses have no passion and the profession itself is not given the kind of importance that it is given in the US.
Also, the public hospitals in India are a joke. They are terrible. Although some of the best doctors in India come from there. I guess, after seeing more patients than you can handle and having a free hand to do pretty much whatever the heck you want with zero liability (unfortunately and sadly at the cost of the poorest of the poor) they become good.
In most cities in India the private hospitals have turned into a profit making operation with zero oversight and in most cases governments supporting them in manufacturing patients. I would get a second and third opinion on any expensive procedure that would a doctor would recommend in India.
I made lot of friends who are doctors in India and all of them tell me they get direct cash kickbacks from hospitals and labs for referring patients. This is be highly illegal in the US.
Cleanliness is another major issue in Indian hospitals. Even in the best ones most staff don't follow basic sterilization procedures that are common in the western world.
So all in all its great that the hospitals in India are affordable to a cross section of Indians but they can be better with better government oversight and having well trained and passionate nursing staff which might increase costs.
"India also has the worst "private" hospitals if you compare the hospital support staff specially nurses. Most of them (not all) nurses have no passion and the profession itself is not given the kind of importance that it is given in the US."
This is because Nurses don't get paid well, avg pay will be around Rs 15,000/month which is simply not enough in metro cities.
Majority of the profits of private hospitals goes towards Doctors and hospital administration.
Nurses pay have been stagnant for so long. Nurses don't even get extra pay or shift allowance for working nights. Many of the skilled ones, migrate to western countries rather than stay and work in India.
Nurses do get paid well in govt hospitals, but govt hospitals are so few as compared to privately run hospitals.
I always think that even nurses that are relatively well paid are really underpaid for the job that they do. It is a highly stressful job doing a lot of really unpleasant things under difficult conditions. You have no real leeway for having a bad day -- people suffer if you don't perform. It requires a lot of study, experience and skill to do well. While computer programming is a scarce skill, in no way does it compare with the job of a nurse... and still there is no comparison in salary. And that's for nurses that are relatively well paid. The world really is unfair.
I try to impress on the hospital management during my interactions with them that nurses in some ways are the most important staff in a hospital. They interact with the patient the most and they have the most knowledge of the situation than even the doctor in some situations. Hospitals in the west seem to get this but in India they don't. Most of the focus is on the doctors and equipment. Hopefully this should change in the future.
Even some "public" hospitals are really good. e.g. Tata hospital in Mumbai, They have had equipments and cancer treatments, which are even considered state of art in US. Like DOTATATE scan and lutetium therapy has been available to so many people in India for more than 5+ years now. Only 2 hospitals in Mumbai have it Jaslok and TATA. And TATA charges are so low , its a blessing for all the people who have been able to get treatment. Experience both healthcare system. India is cheaper which means every one can get access to cheap medicines and medical treatment. US obviously will fare better.
For those like me who were confused : The Tata hospital was originally commissioned by a philanthropic trust established by one of the Tata's, arguably one of India's most famous business families, and also possibly the most active in philanthropy / social welfare. The Tatas are also responsible for some of India's best research institutes - TIFR / IISc, as well as places like TISS, NCPA.
> Also, the public hospitals in India are a joke. They are terrible. Although some of the best doctors in India come from there.
How can they be terrible and have the best doctors at the same time ?
> Cleanliness is another major issue in Indian hospitals. Even in the best ones most staff don't follow basic sterilization procedures that are common in the western world.
You mentioned before that some private hospitals are amazing, yet here you mention that cleanliness is an issue in indian hospitals. How can they be amazing if cleanliness is an issue ?
> So all in all its great that the hospitals in India are affordable to a cross section of Indians but they can be better with better government oversight and having well trained and passionate nursing staff which might increase costs.
Are you saying that all the nurses in the US come all 'passionate' ?
>How can they be terrible and have the best doctors at the same time ?
If I'm understanding correctly, public doctors are in a good position to get experience in dificult cases and learn from worst cases before to jump to private hospitals
I have a problem with the idea of "passionate nurses".
Nurses shouldn't be "passionate", they have to be professional. Passionate people, unable to emotionally detach, will burn quickly in such place like an hospital (where the supply of suffering people is endless, and they can't decide and bassically obey orders from the upper staff). This has lead in the past to compassionate serial killers. Death angels have always the best intentions drawn in their head. Trying to be the mother and best friend of each one of your patients is a terrible strategy at long term.
Without ever having been to a hospital in India, presumably the doctors go in not-very-good, then when they become excellent they move to a private hospital.
When I look at what surgeons actually do, it seems clear to me that more than anything else they need lots of practice. Life isn't very fair, so I'm guessing most of the practice happens to poor patients and most of the competence happens to rich patients.
I am not saying you should not be proud of Indian progress, but I suspect the experiences of a businessman in a big city in India are vastly different to a low caste woman with TB in rural India.
A friend of mine is a nurse who did social work in rural India. What she told me about the local hospitals was horrifying, not just the condition of the hospital and how patients with infectious diseases were sleeping on the corridors because of lack of beds, but how the doctors had a total disinterest (bordering on contempt) of the uneducated woman who she went to appointments with.
Experiences in India will vary dramatically based on which state you live in. If you are rural Kerla, a state with 50M people in South India, you are likely to get some of the best quality healthcare are very affordable rates.
It’s hard to generalise anything about India which is incredibly huge and diverse.
Kerala is but one state out of many. Kerala is probably the only state in India with a public safety net. How many states names can you pull to exemplify your argument besides Kerala?
Reminds me of Amartya Sen's quote "...whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true".
A lot of systemic issues will only be resolved as the society progresses, and there is a long way ahead for India.
The use of the word "low caste" is in quite mean considering "poor" would be more appropriate.
Just as Black or Native American would be a poor substitute for poor american.
Or Roma/Eskimo/Greenlander/Sami for Europe
Especially considering that the current prime minister and president of India are from so called backward communities.
India has come a long way in social development and using the "caste card" is quite out of taste.
The word "Caste" is of European origin and does not have a proper native equivalent.
The "caste system" itself is again a European concept imported into India to aid the colonial powers in their divide and rule.
Unlike the persecution of the Native Americans, Blacks, Jews or Aboriginal which were systematic state run pogroms often in democracies.
The fate of the "low caste" can be attributed to the fact that they were the most exploited, often to the point of death or slavery under colonial rule.
While the so called "Upper caste" enjoyed second rung positions as peons, clerks and teachers. This experience is universal in the other colonies like Rwanda, Syria or Iraq where the words "Tribes" or "Clans" have come to substitute "Caste".
It must be noted that the newly independent India gave all Indians of both sexes the right to vote and went on further to provide "reservations" the equivalent of "affirmative action". This was long before the black American even got the right to vote. Less said about Europe the better, the "Roma" still get rounded up and "deported" even though as EU citizens they have the right to mobility.
"Caste" is a powerful tool for the unscrupulous politician inside India. The excuse of colonial apologists or more markedly the evangelists (if they are not the former) outside India.
Caste a European concept so prominent in the family names of Americans and Europeans, has today become synonymous with India thanks to the relentless propaganda of the colonialists/evangelists.
It is not out of taste. Caste System(Jati System) though weakened still alive and kicking in India. (Dalits) Lowest caste layer in India is still subjugated to things like Cow vigilantism, Honour killing, Social boycott, Caste clashes and discrimination in various/all forms of life. It is interesting to note that Dalits are almost always on the receiving end of these issues.
Giving example of the Prime Minister/President is equivalent to saying since Barack Obama is the president of US, black discrimination.
PS: I belong to the so called Lower Caste in India and I have myself experienced instances of subtle/blatant discrimination. Thankfully haven't experienced anything serious yet, maybe because I became an Software Engineer and now live in a major city, thanks to the affirmative actions adopted by India, but poorer strata of lower caste living in tier-3 cities/villages face a lot of cases of discrimination even today.
While India has a long way in social development, it still has a long to go. This narrative of bashing Europeans/Outsiders/Pakistanis for anything negative has to stop. Jati System has been in practise for thousands of years now.
> I became an Software Engineer and now live in a major city, thanks to the affirmative actions adopted by India...
You mean from reservations in school / university admissions? Or does that even extend to private employment? Is there widespread resentment?
I'm really curious about the parallels (or not) between racism in the US and caste in India, esp. affirmative action. The US never really went all-in on AA like India did with reservations -- more like pretending if we mostly ignore race then racism will go away -- but it seems like neither approach has really gotten to good place (yet).
If you’re interested there’s an interview on the Brown Pundits Podcast, “The Life and Views of a Middle Class Indian Dalit”,
> In this episode, I had a conversation with a middle-class Dalit who lives in Gujarat. For me, Dalits are people who are reported on, written on, people who I hear about spoken of (usually sympathetically). But I wanted to talk to a Dalit who was a university educated middle-class person, to zero in on the essential aspect of being SC in India today. At least urban India.
> One interesting observation is that his own experience in India is filled with slights, but not day to day oppression. It doesn’t seem the lot of Dalits in urban India is anything like that of black Americans during Jim Crow. He seemed to assume that America had solved much of its race problem and that that’s what Dalits should aspire to. Curiously, Americans at this point, at least on the Left, perceive our racial problems as dire.
Yes, there are registrations in university admissions, which is the one I used. It does not extend to private employment. Regarding the resentment part, yes, people have resentments against reservations, though now even higher caste groups have started demanding reservation - this means the community will call for strike, stop trains, buses to get the attention of the government. OBC reservations in India were started in 1980 after a similar country wide strikes.
Ignorant question: in India, how can a stranger know your caste? These days I assume there is some mobility, so is it possible to say move to Mumbai, dress the part, and rebrand yourself as a higher caste?
I’m in US, race is the thing here and it’s fairly identifiable.
In many cases your surname/family name can give away your caste. There have been social movements in the country where groups have shunned the practice of using their family names that are used to identify caste.
Well there are many ways, most of the Hindu surnames are representatives of their castes- for example Sharma means High Caste Pundit, (Agarwal, Agerwal, Agrawala, Agarwala, Aggarwal, Agrawal)-> all mean a Bania(Trader) Caste etc etc.
Apart from that, you are required to submit your caste certificate in school in for Board Registration, which is loosely handled, hence process is not anonymous, so now your schoolmates know your caste.
In my College, there were many ways to know the caste of the person- like Fee structure is different for SC/STs and Others.
The whole list used to be published publicly, and everyone had to refer to it during semester registration. Now everyone who notices your name knows you an SC/ST.
There was huge resentment in the General/OBC community regarding the Fee Structure, as they just see that his mate is paying almost 1/10th the fee. I usually didn't reveal my caste to anyone, and my surname is a bit ambiguous so sometime my peers/friends used to rant about it as well.
Now after college, I have lived in around 3 major cities- Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Usually no-one asks about your caste here, but it does happens sometime.
People belonging to Higher caste have no issues in revealing it, though people in my/lower communities usually hesitate and do not want to reveal it.
Moving to other city and rebranding yourself as an higher caste might work, but if caught, there can be social severe repercussion. Caste hierarchy is actually flexible and dependent on the social position of the caste in that specific area. So you would also find cases, where X is a higher than Y in some places.
Arranged Marriages in India are most mostly caste based as well.
People also associate caste with IQs as people of lower caste using reservation didn't had to score much in their entrance exams, hence usually I avoid the topic all together if possible. There are other traits as well that people assume.
Now not everyone would discriminate against you, its almost like not every white guy is racist in US, but you would very much like to just avoid interacting with the ones who are.
But I would still say an inherent Bias is still present.
In short, answer to your question- yes rebranding yourself is possible, though its not very simple. There is even a term for it in sociology named Sanskritisation. There is also Brahminisation, which is when a group adopts social traits of Brahmins who sit at the top of the caste system.
I'm very confused by your comment, and I hope you can clarify. I'm familiar with the colonial/European origin of the "cast system", but having been to India a few times and studied/read a bit, saying that the word has no proper native equivalent (to be blunt) seems both irrelevant and kind of disingenuous. Regardless of the word's origin or colonial reasons, it seems clear that caste-related issues are very visible and very present in India today. Do you agree? You seem to admit as much. But you also seem to downplay the entire existence of caste.
I'm really not familiar with the tribe/clan system in Iraq and Syria. My experience in some other former british and french colonies made it clear how the colonial system benefited from or even created and promoted ethnic rivalries, racism, tribalism -- yes absolutely -- but none of those situations seemed to really be a direct analogue of India's caste system. Do most people in India think of caste pretty much the same way as Americans think of ethnicity or racism?
Maybe you can also talk a bit more about Modi and his "low caste" background, because I've been curious about this myself. How much do you make of his "caste" as part his political identity? Do you see this as a sign that the caste system is dead/irrelevant/never-existed? Or that the low castes have triumphed? Or is he a pawn/token in a bigger game?
If one has Anglo-Saxon family names like Smith, Farmer, Clark or the Germanic equivalent like Meyer, Schumacher etc, it is often the profession handed down father to son. In India this is termed the JATTI, and is considered the nearest equivalent of the caste.
If India was the only country where "caste" is a phenomenon, at least we should have a native name for it. People often claim Varna to be the equivalent, but you almost never hear the word "Varna" being used.
The reason is "William Jones", who synthesized the Indian caste system by selectively digging deep into the scriptures.
Caste today is essentially an economic mobility problem and should have a quick death. But by constantly casting it as a social problem people make sure it is kept alive.
The main beneficiaries are
1. Politicians
2. Evangelists
3. Otherwise wealthy Indians who have managed to carve out a quota from the reservation system meant to benefit the backward communities.
4. Used as a stick by the west
5. Naxal and sociologists
Modi unlike Obama isn't a one show man. Nor is he just the face of the party. He has won again and again, and continues to have huge public support. Goes to prove ones caste isn't important to the public.
Caste is also extremely regional, the names are meaningless outside. In the state that I come from TN, the vast majority of the people have gotten rid of the their family names for the last 2-3 generations for the sake of social equality, yet have a 70% reservation.
Understandably JATTI (rather than caste) is significant among the poor because it is their primary social security. So fishermen, metal workers, farmers, weavers etc form a strong community within their profession.
Like a lab rat that has been deliberately infected and the conditions made worse so it can be studied. The "caste system" that should have a natural death, continues to live on thanks to our heros.
What do you mean caste is a European concept? Hinduism has the four varnas and Dalits. How are those European concepts? Europeans didn’t invent varnas, the avarna, Hindu purity concepts, or the jatis. The jatis are Islam so for Europeans to have invented them would be quite impressive.
My wife is a physician. Four weeks ago she was in severe pain and could hardly walk. She drove herself to the ER at the hospital system that is also her employer. After getting admitted at the ER, the first person she saw was a lady to collect her $150 copay... While in severe pain and before seeing a care provider. That's the current US healthcare system.
She ended up having emergency spine surgery. Fused L5-S1 vertebrae and replaced disk in between.
Don't forget Asimov's The Martian Way. First published in November 1952 (!!!), the story is about how Earth refuses to export its water to Martian colonies who are using them as reaction mass on their spaceships. The Martians, in response, fly to Saturn's ice rings and ship a huge chunk back by using it itself for reaction mass.
I loved his "Robots"-trilogy (actually I think that there was a 4th book but when I the first 3 again recently I haven't been able to find the 4th one as ebook on Amazon & Kobo :( ) => they definitely motivated me to learn & program my first backpropagation network :)
I grew up with chronic nose issues. When I was about 12 years old I was told I had enlarged adenoids which should be operated on. However, mostly due to my own laziness and the fact that you can get by without the surgery, I didn't get the procedure done. Every single year, I suffered from what seemed like perpetual flu for 6-8 months. I never remember being able to breath from both my nostrils. When I slept at night, my watch with a sleep monitor would report just 2-3 hours of sleep since I had to keep switching sides every half an hour or so (if your right nostril is blocked and you sleep on your left, then it will slowly unblock itself but then the left one might block itself). Basically, life sucked.
So just last month (after a really bad flight where I ended up with blood in my eardrums because my insides were incapable of equalising pressure), I bit the bullet and got a CT scan done and went to an ENT. The doc took one look at my scan and basically said "I can't believe you can actually breath at all". I had a really bad DNS (deviated nasal septum) and chronic sinusitis. On his recommendation, I got a FESS + septoplasty procedure done. The surgery itself was fairly short (~1 hour) but the post-op follow ups were somewhat unpleasant..
However, I would highly recommend the procedure to anyone who suffers from similar problems. Even though it has been little more than a month since the surgery and I can't give final judgement, I can breath from both my nostrils for the first time in my life. I am sleeping much better and I think my stamina has gone up a little as well. Probably the most important thing is that having flu like symptoms made me extremely cranky and short tempered in the past, and that is gone now. Life just seems better!
Probably the most difficult to solve for is Google Photos. Google offers 15 GB, and this gets filled up really fast if you take a lot of photos and videos. I don't, but still with every phone upgrade I've tried to move all files over to my new device, which results in space running out quite quickly. On top of that, Photos is actually _really_ nice. It works seamlessly, and offers features like facial recognition out of the box.
Anyway, I tried 3 different options - Nextcloud, Syncthing, and Immich.
Nextcloud was a little too complicated to setup, even with docker. Wasn't impressed by it.
Syncthing had an issue with Android app support. I think there are a couple of forks, but I didn't want to rely on that.
Immich was what I finally settled on. It is photos/videos specific, so doesn't work as a general purpose backup but I was more than happy just solving for this. My Google storage was being used roughly half and half by Email and Photos. Solving for half was good enough! On the plus side, Immich is a really impressive Google Photos replacement, and behaves almost exactly the same as the Google app, and has advanced features like facial recognition, dupe detection etc.
For email, contacts, SMS etc, I'm still relying on native Google backup.
Finally, there was Whatsapp. I had disabled Google backup a while ago, but wanted to preserve the photos from it. For that, I configured Immich to sync the whatsapp images folder with my library, and that's been working perfectly well.
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