alt Hacker NewsA good example of that is the guys on r/homelab explaining how they built a NAS so their wife could save her phone media without Google Photos.
Man, paying Google/Apple $5/mo is surely a much better solution for her. And are you really doing 3-2-1 on that?
Save the dicking around for your own stuff.
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> Man, paying Google/Apple $5/mo is surely a much better solution for her.
According to which criteria?
There are values beyond "basic convenience" that are important as well. Being independent from a subscription service is one of them. Having full control over your own media being another.
Moreover, subscriptions in general have disadvantages. For example:
1. If a subscription service decides to increase their prices tenfold, there is nothing a customer can do to stop them.
2. If they decide to stop operating completely, a customer also has no say into the matter.
3. If the subscription service decides to just unilaterally stop offering the service to a particular user, they can do so at their own discretion, at any time.
This all means that whatever value is being "obtained" by using a subscription service, it is only going to last for as long as the provider wants it to last.
ha even better on /r/localllm husbands are scratching their head why their wives and kids just won't use their local chatgpt. It's fast and i bought 4 5090 for this why won't they use it!
Brothers, maybe they don't want you to see all their private chats with AI?
and lose a lifetime's worth of pictures because Google identified a pic of your toddler in their pyjamas as CSAM and nuked your life. Or your 13y/o kid fiddled with themselves infront of gemini. etc
Of all the dicking around one can do in a homelab, and I'm guilty of plenty of it, setting up some network storage for photo backup is easily one of the highest value things you can do.
> Man, paying Google/Apple $5/mo is surely a much better solution for her. And are you really doing 3-2-1 on that?
Just some days back someone on reddit posted how their 14yo son (via a family/linked Google account) used Gemini Live to, err, enjoy himself with the camera on.
All his accounts are now permanently locked for CSAM.
So, yes, not being beholden to a megacorp absolutely has its uses.
yes, the economics, and ease of use, of google/apple cloud storage is unmatched
and yes, most people willing to endeavor into the area are hobbyist, with all that entails
however, reading even one story of someone losing access to their cloud photos for xyz reason, is enough to decide that you ought to have some mechanism in place to ensure ownership of your data
Except with modern tooling it's not a huge task anymore to run these services.
Cost wise on the right hardware it is very cheap to run, add the privacy/personal control aspect it's no wonder so many people do it.
Both my wife and I are reluctant to upload our entire photo collection spanning 20+ years to the cloud. Immich has been working really well for us, the experience for her is just as seamless as it would be for Google Photos, I think.
And at $180/yr for the 2TB of storage we'd need to pay for, vs. maybe $200 in hardware, it pays itself off pretty quickly... if you exclude the time spent setting it up and administering it. But I don't mind, it's a bit like digital gardening for me.