Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 24th Apr 2012 17:39 UTC
Well, this has been a very, very long time in the making. Google has finally unveiled its big Dropbox competitor: Google Drive. You start with 5GB for free, and you can go all the way to 1TB for $50 per month. This is a big deal for many (if you were to use rumouring as a gauge), but all I can think of is this: why on earth would you entrust your files to a company - any company - whose sole interest is extracting money from you, and who, to boot, is subject to crazy American laws?
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Member since:2009-08-05
+1 for SpiderOak.
They seem to be trustworthy, their blog entries are interesting and give off a sense of honesty... and unless they're lying through their teeth, the zero-knowledge client-side encryption is exactly what you want.
Yes, you have more control on a home server, but how much redundancy does that offer you?
Member since:2005-11-13
even if the US laws where more lenient, even if Google was doing it fully as a non-profit, in fact even if you could find a safe country where to store your files with an organisation with high moral standards, it doesn't matter: never trust anybody to take care of your own security.
This. Even if your data is on a server hosted by a company you trust, in a country you trust, there's no guarantee that server isn't going to get hacked. In other words, whether your sensitive data is on your local hard drive or on a server somewhere else, it BETTER be encrypted and/or at least password protected. In that case, it doesn't really matter WHERE you store it.
As for setting up your own storage solution, that's all fine and good, until a fire or tornado comes along and renders your storage solution useless. As for me, there is some data that I absolutely cannot afford to lose, so I want to have at least a backup copy 'off site' somewhere. I would NEVER store my primary copy in the cloud though.
In regard to my data and privacy, I don't think that either Google or the government would be interested in things such as my fitness routines, grocery lists, code snippets, etc. The only thing remotely 'juicy' is my journal, which is password protected. And even if it were decrypted by someone, and they were able to figure out which app they needed to read it, there's not anything in there that's going to get me fired, or in trouble with the law.
Basically, my point is this... if data that you absolutely need to keep secret is not secure enough so you could put it on a server owned by your worst enemy, it's probably not secure enough.
RE[2]: Comment by Radio - quote of the week
by jabbotts on Wed 25th Apr 2012 15:53
in reply to "RE: Comment by Radio"
Member since:2007-09-06
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/19/13 23:02 UTC, submitted by M.Onty
"Microsoft has sensationally abandoned its controversial plans to restrict the sharing of XBox One games, and has also removed daily online authentication requirements for its forthcoming console", reports The Guardian. They had no choice. Still a good move.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/19/13 22:28 UTC
"A snippet of code in the Steam digital distribution platform has revealed that Valve may be planning to let users easily share their games with friends in the future. The Verge has verified the code's authenticity, which was originally spotted by a member of the NeoGAF gaming forum; the code references a 'shared game library' and a notification that would alert a user when their games are currently in use by a borrower." This would change the, uh, game.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:33 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
Linked by Anonymous on 06/18/13 22:26 UTC
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
"The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 21:03 UTC
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."More News »
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Member since:
2009-06-20
Otherwise, an excellent alternative would be SpiderOak, the only one to do privacy right: all is encoded on your side.
https://spideroak.com/
And they like open-source: https://spideroak.com/code
Otherwise, I think you get it slightly wrong, Thom: professional paranoids like John Young, the guy who runs http://cryptome.org/, or security experts like Bruce Schneier ( http://www.schneier.com/ ) would tell you that even if the US laws where more lenient, even if Google was doing it fully as a non-profit, in fact even if you could find a safe country where to store your files with an organisation with high moral standards, it doesn't matter: never trust anybody to take care of your own security.
So yeah, you almost made the point by telling people to host their files themselves. But I will gladly use Google Drive, and you should too. They are just a convenient place to put your encrypted sensitive files.