BB complements TM for me; it's super useful to have a local versioned backup that's updated every time I dock my laptop with the desk, and is also invisibly supplemented by a versioned backup of changes I've made that the OS maintains on unused space on the laptop's drive. Works even if I'm sitting at a cafe with all the radios turned off to get maximum life out of the battery.
Backblaze? Backblaze is there for in case my house burns down and I leave with nothing but the clothes on my back.
For everyone else, sure, there might be 100 people in the world that will actually audit their open source password managers. But that isn't exactly moving the rest of the industry forward (be it from the engineering perspective or the user perspective).
In this case, (almost) perfect is the enemy of good.
Unless you have spoken to all managers and SWEs I doubt you can make such a blanket statement about the immense workforces at Microsoft, Google and Apple.
Sure, one could argue that Microsoft is profit-driven, Google might be marketshare-driven and Apple might be UX-driven, and all of those could be true (or at least true for a major subset of both the engineers and the targeted user group). But it would be a guess at best and not helpful to your personal situation or anyone else's.
Personal computing is a box under your desk or in your pocket beefy and smart enough to solve your problems without checking in with daddy warbucks and the mothership.
Nearly everything about modern cloud computing is the opposite... it disempowers individuals and creates an unhealthy relationship with things that are out of the users control. How many peoples' livelihoods have been messed up because FANG decided to lock them out for some reason or another? How many articles have been posted to HN and elsewhere begging for a FANG employee to come along and fix their problem because there is no other option?
The server in my closet or at my datacenter isn't going to lock me out because I pissed off Google.
In practice, I am continually having to disable cloud-related features (worded that I need them in the most patronizing way possible) every time Windows updates
In practice, common knowledge on desktop computing is atrophying because of an increasingly acute lack of knowledgeable users on the internet. As more and more of the young users who grew up in this gilded cage enter a level of expertise, their advice pollutes forums with cloud-backed solutions and knowledge of 'the old ways' becomes harder and harder to find.
Because it lets people - such as my older relatives - who wouldn't use a desktop and would have problems setting up and configuring one - especially for an "advanced" use case such as setting up your own private cloud.
As a computer instructor back home in west Africa, before smartphones I had students (especially older ones) who struggled with even using a mouse or keyboard. I've never had to teach a single one of them how to use their smartphone (at least for things like browsing the internet, taking and editing photos, making notes, etc). Providing things like photo editing on-device, without having to download and figure out a program like photoshop (or image magic for example) is a non-starter. Now they can edit, filter, share, make home movies- all without needing any help.
>> Where is the passion for 'personal computing' when nearly everything personal about it is delegated to the cloud?
I don't know what you mean by passion, but these people love their phones and the things it lets them do, with an intuitive UI (as well as a transferable one between Android and iOS, since they're about the same feature wise at the moment)
>> Personal computing is a box under your desk or in your pocket beefy and smart enough to solve your problems
This is ONE version of personal computing, and tbh an option only available to us "hackers".
>> without checking in with daddy warbucks and the mothership.
You don't need to check in. My country has crappy bandwidth and of course it's impossible to do things like pay for iCloud or gdrive without credit cards, so most use the phone without backups, and they're fine.
>> Nearly everything about modern cloud computing is the opposite... it disempowers individuals and creates an unhealthy relationship with things that are out of the users control.
How is allowing my students, older relatives, etc - who wouldn't be able to use a laptop or desktop machine - to go online and talk to their children abroad using apps like whatsapp - disempowering? I understand your point - I miss the days when we had computers to mess around with and learn Linux and coding on. Most of us on here came up that way, compared to kids now who don't have to see the underlying OS or tinker with it - they can just play Fortnite and watch YouTube.
But most people aren't interested in these things, or even care about machine models, OS versions etc. They buy phones because they want to communicate online and talk to their friends and family. That's it.
Before whatsapp the only way I could talk to my family was through international calls, which are prohibitively expensive, so they would happen about once a month. Once they got on whatsapp though we moved to being able to talk, share videos and pics of things happening at home, every single day. In addition a large part of getting rid of our dictator was people being able to use apps like whatsapp to share the latest information, even as he cracked down and only allowed propaganda to be published even in private newspapers.
This is a net positive however you look at it - it has brought far more people (especially in poorer countries) into the digital age. I find that very empowering in the sense of putting tools in the hands of more people, including barely literate ones (my country has something like a 40% illiteracy level rate) who use things like whatsapp voice notes to communicate.
>> How many peoples' livelihoods have been messed up because FANG decided to lock them out for some reason or another?
This is true but not really related to your larger point about computing devices and how they are being used now.
>> The server in my closet or at my datacenter isn't going to lock me out because I pissed off Google.
This really doesn't happen that much often considering we're talking billions of users.
We are on a "hacker" site where most people are skilled "tech people" so of course when things break for them they write blog posts and comments and we get to see and argue over those. Most people using these devices don't know or care about any of this, and have gmail accounts going back a decade that they've used without any issues.
In summary your version of computing (which is similar to mine) just isn't the universal version. I always find joy whenever I go back home and find taxi drivers using their phones to play music, people using YouTube to check instructional videos and post their own etc. When my grandmother died my uncle gathered all the photos, videos, etc that we have of her as a family on whatsapp, and made a nice video tribute of her life to share with us. Gathering the photos and videos took longer than making the movie itself, which was a few taps, and it was a very powerful moment emotionally esp for us family members outside the country. We were able to participate in remembering her life together in a way that international phone calls and a complex (to my uncle) photo editing app on a PC under a desk would ever have let us.
I find this very empowering, and it makes me happy how far we've come and how many more people we have brought across the digital divide. Let's not be myopic because those of us on here have the technical knowledge to disdain and even dump these platforms.
And keep in mind that American / Western users' use cases are very different from the farmer who can only afford a cheap android phone, being able to come online finally to check on crop prices so they won't get cheated, send pictures of their crops to prospective buyers, and even do things like checking the weather.
It's the tyranny of the "minimum viable user" [1]. By making information systems that are safe enough for your students or their grandparents to use, the companies have to take away the customizability, configurability and assorted "sharp edges" that make those systems useful for more advanced users. I say "have to" deliberately, because the counterargument of, "Why can't they make both," never seems to describe a real world system.
Whether its Windows, MacOS or heck even Gnome3, the more an information system attempts to cater to the needs of novice users, the worse it becomes at catering to the needs of advanced users. And the terrifying reality is that inexperienced users outnumber us hackers by two orders of magnitude (or more).
[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyr...
Some points to back up my contention:
- Microsoft does not allow the Windows serf to uninstall Edge on Windows 10.
- Microsoft is hostile to the idea of allowing a Windows serf to self-sign their own TPM.
- Microsoft does not allow the Windows serf to inspect the code that arbitrates their computing.
- Microsoft does not offer the Windows serf any ability to inspect, reject, or roll-back "updates."
Understanding these harms helps my personap situation by enabling me to make informed decisions about avoiding serfdom to Microsoft and their legion of cog-like engineers, which is definitely to my benefit. Microsoft engineers actualize the harmful policy of "Windows users deserve less;" therefore, the sniveling SWEs at Microsoft deserve less.
Part of that less which I shall forever withhold is my money and my endorsement of their basic capacity to ethical computing. Microsoft engineers are simply not respectable with regards to any ideals of user empowerment they may pretend to hold.
Being able to buy a new Mac and make it into an exact copy of the old Mac by using time machine is amazing - I’ve done it a few times over the years, and it still impresses me every time. Plus I have time machine backups from 2011 which I occasionally browse to see what my kids were up to then.
You are a different target market, always check for silly normie settings
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2478567#2478608
Apparently Dropbox notices they already have that file, and instead of you uploading it they just make it appear in your account.
ISO files are included in that filter list, among other files like VMs and such. Seems like a massive exclusion net to cast when claiming everything is backed up.
Removing these exclusions is very easy and obvious.
It should be used in concert with an offsite backup service like Backblaze.
Can you link to a step by step on this - I think this would help a lot of folks.
https://www.hanselman.com/blog/is-your-stuff-backed-up-recov...
Check out his YouTube videos as well, for a more visual walk-through.
File history is for all your files, but it is amazing at it. You can roll back to a particular version from particular date
Plenty arguments against Logic, but these three are not in the same league.
For other workflows, Reaper and Logic can do things that are essentially impossible in Live/Bitwig/FL Studio.
There's no best DAW for everyone, only best-DAW-for-the-workflow-you're-using-today. Sometimes that's Logic, sometimes it's not.
Not in live: logic's environment (you could do this in an M4L object, but not live itself)
Windows/Android can be considered a natural pair, Microsoft seem to think so. Personally use Linux/Android pair, and I've been vaguely considering switching to an iphone to avoid Google.
One of the sad ironies of my life is that once I switched to macOS and could’ve avoided all the annoyances and instabilities I’ve had with audio on Windows, I just never felt like making music again. Life is like that sometimes. :)
Suffice to say I think all of the software in your list is pretty great and I chose what I chose for reasons that are wholly mine!
There's FLStudio (or Bitwig, or Reaper) to match Apple's Logic, 1Password (or Bitlocker from what I hear) to match Google's passwords.google.com, and Backblaze+others to match Time Machine
Sure 'switching to apple' is a choice, but only one of many. Personally I am tired of using tech designed for and by managers and SWE's gunning for promotion and not personal empowerment or passion for personal computing
Besides, everyone needs to ditch Chrome. Firefox could use the love