[sethherr]

I think the fact that Apple is having to fight this fight is evidence of why they were right to make a secure walled garden. I don’t know of any other service I would recommend my mother use for securely backing up her phone.

I think the UK is ultimately going to roll back this law. I don’t think this means that iCloud E2E is hostile to Apple or its users. I think Apple is going to win.

The war isn’t won by telling people to use GPG https://moxie.org/2015/02/24/gpg-and-me.html

[styanax]

> The war isn’t won by telling people to use GPG

Tangent, a friend and I started using Delta Chat with a chatmail relay and it's incredibly friendly to get started, and hides the fact GPG tech is being used from the user; one can export a bundle of the key data as needed and easily copy the key profile to a second device over local wifi (I was impressed at how smooth it was).

Not that I've kept track, but Delta Chat's UX is probably the first easy, no-nonsense implementation of using GPG tech as a foundation but keeping it away from the user experience I've encountered (and liked). It has it's pain points but I mean it just works and my buddy and I chat all day over it using a public relay.

[Flere-Imsaho]

Doesn't Protonmail do this as well? Proton to Proton accounts will use gpg under the hood?

[teiferer]

> I think the fact that Apple is having to fight this fight is evidence of why they were right to make a secure walled garden

Would you mind explaining? I don't see how that's evidence.

[mistercheph]

yeah guys, we don’t win by using free and open technologies, we win if we all buy {NAMECORP} devices, that’s true victory right there, backed by a real warranty, that’s what grandma wants

[JKCalhoun]

I've had files in Apple's iCloud for 14 years now (had to look that up) and they're still there. I have no reason to believe that they won't still be there after I am dead. Apple is a big company with a big reputation to protect.

I can't say the same for the smaller services.

I don't have any grandmothers still alive but would certainly suggest iCloud for all family members.

(But, FWIW, I copy down everything from iCloud annually and store on a portable 1TB drive to have my own cloud-backup.)

[Fischgericht]

I don't know in which part of this planet you are living in, but: 14 years ago you might have lived a free society where your ideas and thoughts could not cause you to get arrested, deported or killed.

Yeah, back then Apples iCloud might have been the best suggestion.

If you are trying to extrapolate from the past - which is a good thing in general - do not go back ONLY 14 years from now, but try a bigger time span, too.

I was born in Germany. When I extrapolate from the past on ANYTHING, I at least always start in the year 1933.

No, not a good idea if you expect that within your lifespan some entity might be able to be forced to tell a regime where you are hiding right now.

Taking control of your own data is shitloads of work, I and understand people do not have time it, and have other priorities.

I am just making my point here on how to better extrapolate and project from the past towards the future.

[couscouspie]

Taking control of your own data is shitloads of work, I and understand people do not have time it, and have other priorities.

That's not a physical law, but just the result of the current technological landscape.

[swiftcoder]

If you have a free and open technology that is sufficiently user-friendly that grandma isn't going to lose all her photos, I'm all ears

[qn9n]

This is the major issue, most free and open technology is not marketed as well; isn't anywhere near as user friendly and often times takes a lot more time and effort to setup. Most people don't care enough for that.

[port11]

Okay, secure E2EE backups we've more or less perfected for a while. There's good F/LOSS solutions for that. And if you're willing to pay a bit, thinks like Backblaze come to mind. In other areas it's true that open-source stuff is less polished, but not backups. I mean, a few months back Apple had a regression where they were un-deleting people's photos, that's pretty nasty.

[zaphar]

You haven't actually listed one yet. I can't think of one myself that Grandma could use safely.

[port11]

Duplicati was easy enough to convince the family. And for our home server, I set up Restic. I agree that this later one is tricky to set up properly and grandma would definitely struggle.

[dTal]

SyncThing. It's set-and-forget. All you need is two networked computers. Grandma and Grandpa can back up to each other's phones.

[swiftcoder]

> a few months back Apple had a regression where they were un-deleting people's photos, that's pretty nasty

As failure modes go, not great, but I'd say strictly less bad for the average user than losing photos you didn't plan to delete

[nrhrjrjrjtntbt]

The 35mm film camera, developed by a photo lab, with pictures stored in a show e box

[nrhrjrjrjtntbt]

Shoe!

[realusername]

Modern devices are so locked down that you couldn't build such software even if you wanted to.

Those corporations are part of the problem, not the solution.

[megous]

Plug in a phone, run adb pull /storage/emulated/self/DCIM or wherever that Android garbage OS stores photos these days.

Local, doesn't need encryption since there's no middle in E2E that you need protection against, and simple.

Grandma can setup ~/.zshrc `alias bak=cd ~/phonephotos && adb pull ...` to make it even simpler.

[swiftcoder]

When I'm done teaching grandma shell scripting, I'll let you know

[megous]

You're way too slow at teaching...

[sambeau]

I turnips were watches, I'd wear one by my side.