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Comment by samch | Hacker News Reader

Do you have kids? I'm asking because I know we do, and it's really hard to cull photos of your children. If it's blurry or an otherwise crappy picture, then yes, we will delete it. Otherwise, we're holding on to it for the long run and nobody can persuade us otherwise.

I agree that it's a burden, and it's one that many parents likewise share. It is difficult to be as selective with the shutter as you suggest. Kids don't really sit still, and you have to burst during those precious seconds when everything is just right.

In our case a NAS would make a lot of sense. We've tried Arc (with Glacier/S3) and other storage solutions (Time Machine), but I've had my eye on a Synology unit for quite some time. Also, internal storage as you suggest obviously isn't an option for MacBook Pro users like us.

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Agreed. I also tend towards Save All The Things, because Future Me (or my kids/grandkids!) might feel differently. I'd prefer to err on the side of having too many pictures, than only having a few. We can always cull them later, but it's hard to bring back what has been discarded.

If you have someone in your life who likes to do genealogy research, talk to them. You might also find that you would have been Very Interested in seeing what your grandparents did in their spare time, hear how they spoke, and so forth.

30 years from now, my kids will (I hope) be starting their own families, and I'd like their kids to be able to have insight into what their parents were like as kids, or what I and my wife are like as parents.

I liked looking through my parents' photos as a kid, but there was a couple of photo books at most. I can't imagine my (hypothetical) grandkids sorting through 60 years worth of digital photos unless software has gotten a lot better.

The busy work and stress of dealing with digital photos has actually caused me to take fewer photos. I have a preservationist bent and I just don't want to deal with organizing them.

that's the sad part - few photos available made each of them worthy inspection, bringing memories etc.

now, having 100 GB of photos & videos from somebody's childhood will either produce ignorance of whole content (no, nobody will ever want to go through all of them, guaranteed, and if yet they would hate it), or some automated way (yet to be invented) to take out best maybe 100-200.

By not selecting few good worthy now, you're just pushing the decision into the future, to your/somebody else's shoulders.

> internal storage isnt the solution for laptop users > go and buy a $500 nas + drivers

you know you can buy a cheap desktop for $400 and use it for nas and more? like a backup computer when your laptop is dead?

I'd argue that my time + cost of parts would make this more expensive than a good NAS. When it comes to storing my photos and video, I'd rather have a purpose-built system than a DIY that I have to configure, patch, and maintain. Just my two cents.

anything that limits you, like a shelf NAS solution do, will cost you more time as you adapt to it. instead of the other way around.

Synology is great. I have a DS-215j, and it handles everything I need much more smoothly than my old NAS. And since their OS is shared across their whole product line, you get access to all the enterprise-level features of their big units, and you don't have to worry about your device getting abandoned six months after you buy it.

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