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compounding_ittoday at 6:34 AM1 replyview on HN

My 2 cents:

There was a time when I accidentally deleted some photos of which I had only one copy. I blamed myself for being stupid not having a copy but also money was tight for additional drives.

Then there is this: depending on a service provider and then blaming them for something like this. The problem is that now you are losing trust in service providers (of which there should be little to begin with) and on top of that you are also blaming yourself for depending on them. However you have to create a trust model where your fault allows you to have a service helping you with it while a fault at the service provider will allow you to restore data from your end too, getting the best of both worlds.

MacOS and Windows / Google with always logged in systems that lock you out completely at their will is an example of how your devices are not owned by you to begin with and then trusting them with your data as well means your digital life is basically owned by them completely.

Now imagine that there are no humans to solve this but endless LLM bots that respond with generic responses because the LLM has never seen a problem like this. I want to point out that owning your data and hardware is really important if you depend on it and your business especially does.


Replies

ryanjshawtoday at 6:48 AM

I think this argument conflates “what’s possible” with “what’s reasonable”.

In a complex modern society, we can’t all be expected to have backup plans to the Nth degree.

Is it possible to bore for my own water supply, install solar+inverter/battery backup for electricity, get a medical degree to treat my own wounds? Sure but most would say it’s not reasonable.

It’s why we have regulations and ombudsmans for healthcare, transport, finance, water provider, electricity providers, communications providers etc.

Oddly missing from that list is critical technical infrastructure providers like Microsoft, Apple and Google.

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