We've banned this account for obvious reasons. Could you please not create accounts to break HN's guidelines with? It's not hard to use the site as intended, if you want to, and it's in your interest to do that, since breaking down the threads with comments like this will just lead it to informational heat death.
Wait, you think Clinton was going to start a war with Russia?
Did you miss how she sold American uranium interests to Russia?
Did you miss how Russia worked with her campaign to prepare the Steele dossier, i.e. how Russia worked with the Clinton campaign to prevent Trump from being elected?
Did you miss how the Obama administration (in which she was Secretary of State) worked with Russia, how Obama was caught on-mic telling Medvedev to tell Putin that Obama would have more flexibility after Obama was reelected?
These are all widely reported facts.
It's bizarre how people still think Russia wanted Trump to win the election.
> HOWEVER, with this new 7.0 release you can pay a little more and increase that retention time to one year, or forever. This was a highly requested feature for the situation you ran into.
I'm glad to hear that Backblaze has finally made such an option available. However:
> For cost reasons, Backblaze purges the files that you deleted from your local drive after 30 days.
As someone who once almost lost his PGP key and had to recover it from old physical backup media, I'd like to point out that that is not a "backup" service. It's sort of like a lazily expiring mirror, but it's definitely not a backup service.
Do you look at all of your files every 30 days? How long would it take you to notice that a random file had disappeared from the filesystem 7 layers deep? Have you ever needed to restore a years-old file?
(You need not explain why you do it; I understand about users who could use it as a cloud storage service by deleting files after they're backed up. The point remains that it's not a backup.)
What you're referring to, I'd call a historical archive, containing many backups.
When I think about a backup, I'm thinking in terms of recovering last good state after a drive failure or catastrophic filesystem corruption. I don't tend to think of a backup as implying a deep history unless that part is explicitly stated. That distinction was easier to notice back in the days of backing up to tape or optical discs - you don't expect each tape/disc to contain a version history, just a single snapshot, and you don't expect your collection to retain long-gone files unless it's an ever-growing pile of tapes/discs.
In that mindset, it's not reasonable to expect that a backup service necessarily provides the full historical archive.
> you don't expect your collection to retain long-gone files unless it's an ever-growing pile of tapes/discs.
Rule number whatever of backups: Don't discard old backups. Bitrot occurs, and people make mistakes, and newer backups can have flaws that older ones don't, which will go undiscovered until it's too late.
We're not talking about piles of tapes, we're talking about virtually unlimited disk space. State-of-the-art backup software chunks and deduplicates data and stores snapshots of directory trees. For most cases, there's no reason not to keep a subset of old snapshots, and many reasons to keep them.
What's your criteria for backup? I completely agree that something like RAID is not backup, but 30-60 days seems comparable to other backup services and covers most scenarios. The old-school manual process of swapping a USB drive at work every week/month has the similar retention.
The only consumer-facing system I've used with multi-year retention is Time Machine. Every few years it has trouble "verifying" the backup and I have to start over (it also deletes old backups when you run out of space). Right now my backup only goes to August.
Backup means that if it takes me 6 months to realise that the 2014 finances folder had been accidentally deleted, I can still recover it.
I'd love to see BackBlaze offer the option to select "mission critical" folders that have super-long-life (Time Machine-like) version retention. Give everyone a few gigabytes of this for free, charge a premium to increase that space.
Though that sounds tricky to set up all the UI for. For now you can set up a separate backup of that stuff. Set B2 as the backend and you get 10GB free.
Maybe—and the UI could be little more than a script that does exactly what you described.
The point of making it a UI is, first and foremost, to get people thinking about this question. And it gives people the option to acheive what you just described without stumbling upon a post like yours on Hacker News.
A post like mine? But it's your post that has the idea...? The only thing I said about how to make it possible is "separate backup", which anyone can think of in two seconds and is only a hint of a tenth of an explanation. I don't understand.
Something like Attic, Borg, CrashPlan, Restic, etc, that allow snapshot retention periods, like "1 per year for the last X years, 1 per month for the last X months, one per day for the last X days".
> I completely agree that something like RAID is not backup, but 30-60 days seems comparable to other backup services and covers most scenarios.
That doesn't protect against bitrot. e.g.
1. File is backed up (snapshot A).
2. File is slightly corrupted by bitrot, cosmic ray, etc.
3. File is modified by user, corruption is unnoticed.
4. File is backed up again (snapshot B).
5. "Backup" service deletes snapshot A.
6. User discovers corruption.
7. User looks to restore earlier versions until an uncorrupted one is found.
8. User discovers that all available snapshots were made after corruption happened.
Or replace "file" with "directory" and "bitrot" with "accidental file deletion" and the user still suffers from data loss.
Mirrors are not backups, and a few revolving snapshot slots is effectively a mirror.
So far I just handle it manually. I've dialed in pretty good preferences for incoming content, (for example, using regex-based whitelists and blacklists to weed out material I'm not interested in from channels that aren't already organized into appropriate playlists) and when I browse the videos directory to find something to watch I delete things that have been sitting there a while which I don't expect to get around to.
There would be a lot more work to do if I wanted to "product-ize" the tool, and periodically youtube breaks it by adding a new feature or moving something around. For personal use, though, it's very needs-suiting. The whole approach is also less of a tempting distraction than browsing youtube itself, so it's easier to manage how much time I spend watching videos. If I ever run out of content, I just go for a walk, or read a book!
I'd be curious to see it as well, sounds good/useful even in its nascent state. I have something similar-ish in that I have a makefile/script setup where all I do is dump a file of url's/playlists/people and let a cron job download updates to things on a 12 hour basis.
Then I just have a setup in plex for youtube videos and I have plethora of content to watch when I have time.
Its jarring to use "normal" youtube now and all the ads after using this setup.
Also really nice for archiving channels and/or preparing for when youtube randomly decides to throw strikes on videos and not being able to see them anymore or people setting things to private etc...
One may or may not like it, but that is language how literally works.
You may not like my swapping the definitions of those words, but that is language how literally works. Therefore, according to your logic, it is valid.
> What blocks you from even considering the option?
Human biology, perhaps? After all, haven't we evolved over thousands of years to be omnivores?
> It's a little strange to see a comment so boastful of a lack of intellectual curiosity on HN.
In other words, according to you, people who aren't interested in being vegetarian lack intellectual curiosity. It's a little strange to see a comment so boastful of intellectual intolerance on HN...
I know plenty of vegetarians and a few vegans. While vegetarians do relative okay especially if they eat eggs, the vegans are forever talking about supplements and are fatigued and look like 60 by the time they are in their 40s.
You have no idea what you are talking about. Those are anecdotes and it sounds like you're biased.
There are plenty of athletes on a vegan diet. Sure we take B12, but plenty of omnivores are deficient as well. The only reason you get more of that is because it's supplemented to livestock.
My blood tests came back absolutely stellar and I eat whatever I want most days. When it comes to sports, I can easily compete with my omnivore friends.
Just describing what I see. I don't disagree that there may be a few people who do fine with it, in general, it is a huge overhead to make sure you are getting enough as a vegan. As a omnivore you can grab that steak and go.
> Sure, they could try fighting a guerilla warfare, they'd even inflict some casualties against the enemy but it's unlikely that in the end they'd succeed against an army that is professional, highly skilled, better equipped, has better offensive and defensive capabilities, knows a lot more about tactics and logistics and has trained for this type of situation on a daily basis.
The one that got basically wiped out despite foreign backing (though the regular army that was their most direct supporter—the North Vietnamese Army—intervened and ultimately won the war after they were crushed)? Yeah, heard of them.
They kind of prove (or at least demonstrate) the point the grandparent post was making, though.
You cited skepticalscience.com, which is John Cook's web site. He's a known scientific fraud, behind the paper Cook, et al, which is cited as the source of the "consensus" claim. If you're interested, you can google up information about their fraudulent paper, the conclusion of which they decided before writing it.
It's because of claims and citations like yours that people don't believe alarmists. It's dishonest (or ignorant) to cite a fraudulent paper as the source for a claim that the science is settled. Real science is falsifiable and can withstand dissent.
Your reaction shows that we have reached the crux of the matter.
Don't take my word for it. You're on the Internet. Look up the evidence about Cook's paper. Their fraud was exposed years ago, yet people continue citing him, his paper, and his Web site. (You probably won't find much about it on Wikipedia, of course.)
And the lies are nothing new. For example, Stephen Schneider advocated scientists and media deceiving the public in APS News Aug/Sep 1996, p. 5. It's been going on for decades.
> Papers rejecting AGW are in an extreme minority.
All the science that's been proven correct was once an extreme minority view. An argument based on the number of people who believe something is not a scientific argument.
And why would you make an unscientific argument about a scientific issue?
I won't. I want peer-reviewed science, like the vastly significant body of research that has been produced showing AGW.
> You're on the Internet. Look up the evidence about Cook's paper.
No. You're the one insisting that the global scientific orthodoxy is wrong. You present the evidence.
> Stephen Schneider advocated scientists and media deceiving the public in APS News Aug/Sep 1996, p. 5.
No, he didn't. Try looking up the original. But even if he did, it wouldn't matter. The science is overwhelming. It makes no difference what one individual said 23 years ago.
> I want peer-reviewed science, like the vastly significant body of research that has been produced showing AGW.
Are you also unaware of the peer-review crisis?
> No. You're the one insisting that the global scientific orthodoxy is wrong. You present the evidence.
Since you appeared to be unaware, I informed you that a particular, widely cited paper was discovered, years ago, to have been fraudulent, and that the information about it is freely available on the Internet. Five seconds on Google (or perhaps DuckDuckGo) would present you with the information.
You have refused to avail yourself of said information.
It is not my responsibility to educate you about science. If you care about scientific integrity, you can look up the information without any interference from me. If you prefer to remain ignorant and fixed in your beliefs, that is your decision.
> No, he didn't. Try looking up the original. But even if he did, it wouldn't matter. The science is overwhelming. It makes no difference what one individual said 23 years ago.
You accused me of "bullshit," but here you are simply lying. I have cited the original, and I have the original, and since you are willfully ignorant, I will quote it here:
On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.
--Stephen Schneider in APS News, Aug/Sep 1996, p. 5
Now you can look it up and see for yourself, and then you can retract your ignorant lie and false accusation.
You obviously don't care about the truth. Climate change is your religion, and your faith is unwavering.
There's definitely issues in science with things like repeatability in individual studies, but that doesn't apply to something like AGW. It's supported by thousands (millions?) of papers, models, meta-studies, science bodies, and so on, all agreeing.
> Now you can look it up and see for yourself, and then you can retract your ignorant lie and false accusation.
Gosh, you're furious. But at least you have got the correct quote, and it just isn't the smoking gun you think it is. It's just one remark, made in public, about the need to be media-savvy. He was not suggesting misleading the public.
> There's definitely issues in science with things like repeatability in individual studies, but that doesn't apply to something like AGW.
That's nonsense. Not only have you not supported your assertion, but: 1) there's no reason to think that AGW is immune to these problems; and, worse, 2) AGW research is not reproducible, because it's not falsifiable, so it specifically does apply to AGW; and 3) even if you think models are meaningful, falsifiable predictions, the models have proven to be inaccurate. The claim fails in every way, from general to specific.
> It's supported by thousands (millions?) of papers, models, meta-studies, science bodies, and so on, all agreeing.
I have to wonder here if you actually believe what you're saying. "All agreeing"? That's a nonsensical, blanket statement. That's not science.
Five seconds on a search engine would prove to you that there are many scientists who do not agree with AGW hypotheses and alarmism. The parallels between your mindset and those of religious true believers who can't tolerate dissenting views are striking. Nope, don't look at any information that might contradict your scriptures, that might reveal their weaknesses, that might undermine the foundations of your faith.
I worked on NASA's "Mission to Planet Earth" program for a few years. Cherry-picking of models that produce results that meet the current agenda is not uncommon. Just as researchers have a (deserved IMHO) reputation for publishing data that concurs with their topics...
> Gosh, you're furious.
Let's recap:
1. You accuse me of "bullshit."
2. I make a truthful claim.
3. You accuse me of lying.
4. I prove my claim and say you should retract your accusation.
5. You say, "Gosh, you're furious!"
Where did you learn to act so shamefully? You accuse someone of bullshitting and lying, then when they prove they're not, your response is, "lol u mad." You can't even handle the truth, and your trolling is predictable.
> He was not suggesting misleading the public.
Of course he was. But he's practiced at couching, characterization, deflection, and projection, just like you are.
Have you looked up John Cook's fraudulence yet? Can you admit that knowledge to your psyche, or does it need to be protected from dissent?
It's downvoted because some random user with >=500 karma didn't like it and clicked the down arrow. That's all downvoting means here. There are no ethics for voting here.
In effect, voting is simply a measure of whether random HN users were pleased or displeased by your comment.
And you're not allowed to mention it, either. If your perfectly reasonable and polite comment gets downvoted to invisibility by random, angry users who won't tolerate diversity of opinion, then suck it up, comrade, and learn to please the hivemind--no complaining!
Of course, certain very-high-karma users can get away with saying things that would be flagged and downvoted to death if said by anyone else.
And that's what HN wants voting to be. Welcome to HN. Enjoy your stay, if you can.
