herrherrmann

You’re right, pCloud is not a bad alternative! I remember being annoyed by the password prompt for the encryption feature, but another user here wrote that they only need it once after every restart, which seems fine to me now. Back when I tried it for the first time (2 years ago) I decided against it because the OneDrive migration was not fully working (many files were skipped and it wasn’t transparent which ones or what was the reason), and the support couldn’t help me figure out any viable solution to migrate all my files. Nowadays with the NAS the migration would have been easier, I suppose.

Ah, you reminded me that I did actually try out iCloud as well! I was unhappy with how the sync worked on macOS – basically lots of magic in the background without any idea what is happening and how long it might take. And you couldn’t even turn off the laptop in between sync attempts, as far as I remember? And their online services are quite far behind the competition as well (no proper folder sharing without requiring the receiver to have an Apple account, for example).

But yeah, I’m still keeping the lowest-tier iCloud subscription to sync my photos via Apple Photos, which is quite nice to have.

Interesting to hear that Windows would simplify some things! Upon reflecting about my time with the Synology NAS, I remembered that there was mostly the network setup I struggled with (DynDNS, port forwarding, static IP address, remote vs. local network access, etc.) – I guess this wouldn’t have been much easier on Windows either, I suppose?

Good to hear that you haven’t run into any issues for a few months, at least! Some peeps warned me that Nextcloud is also quite buggy, but I didn’t run into any issues yet myself.

Hey, author here!

I agree that objectively, it’s not much work to maintain the Synology NAS once everything is correctly set up. But I personally just got tired after attempting to configure the network access alone for the nth time. My goal was to make the NAS accessible remotely (i.e. from outside my home network) and I felt like that was already a big task (comparing different DynDNS providers, port forwarding, asking my internet provider for a static IP address). And the recurring tasks (mostly renewing certificates for the , as far as I remember) would annoy me every year or so.

And I agree with the advantages you listed about a NAS setup! That’s why I tried one out, after all. I did run into some scary security situations (once the DynDNS was set up, someone was immediately trying to log in via brute force), but nothing too major, fortunately. And I never got the network setup right (e.g. to use the local network speed when I’m home and still access my files the same way when I’m away via the internet). So, these were only theoretical advantages that I could never really get to myself (I’m sure other people figured it out, but I didn’t exactly find good documentation on these things online either).

And regarding your last point, I also generally agree! Although it feels silly to me to have a NAS at home and then still do regular backups via another storage/backup service elsewhere. I wouldn’t want to back up 1+ TB of files every day or even week, although there might be diffing solutions for that.

Anyway, I hope this answer makes it clearer why I decided against a (Synology) NAS in the end. I’m sure other peeps figured it out and are happy with their Synology setup, but for my purposes I’ve never really gotten there.

I agree, the article seems very anecdotal and grossly generalizing. The point at the end might be to look for a company that suits you, but that’s not really a new insight, is it?

Yeah, they somehow manage to break the app more and more despite recent rewriting efforts(?), moving to more native views, etc.

I’d love to use and support a music streaming service that allows me to incorporate my own files in a good way, but there doesn’t seem to be any great solution. I’m close to just migrating to a file-based approach and just keeping a big local library of mp3s/flacs (and Spotify as a fallback for stuff I don’t own yet or want to check out temporarily).

I’d love for my city’s government to do something similar. Peeps reving their engines and playing cool for no good reason in the middle of the night is such an asocial and egoistic behavior and ruins the quality of life for whole neighborhoods. Not to mention the terror it entails for the animals in the city.

Oh wow, I wonder what the Boolean value “maybe” is about! (It’s mentioned e.g. on the quickstart page.)

Fair enough! I also usually prefer to use web apps so that there’s no need for an extra instance of Chromium that needs to spin up. And following links is also more straightforward if you just open e.g. a specific Notion page or block in a new browser tab.

Thanks for sharing your journey and opinions! I’ve also switched from a Canon EOS 7D to the X-T3 and was pleasantly surprised about all the neat extra features (e.g. the good color filters, GPS metadata via Bluetooth, customizable controls) and how nicely it can be handled despite the tiny body.

You can use other free apps for 2FA, e.g. Authy. That might even be better for security because even if your password manager account is hacked/leaked, you would still have the 2FA setup in a separate app/platform. That being said, it’s of course more convenient to have passwords and 2FA tokens in the same app.

I was very confused by that. I only realized that Al is one of the two children when I saw his picture further down on the about page. Before that, I assumed it was an awkward attempt of claiming to have an AI “in the family”.

The EuroNet ATMs in Germany are actually pretty alright! I use them all the time and recommend them to visitors as well because they are widely available and still among the more official and hassle-free ATM brands around here. (They have a simple UI, support many languages and never ask for extra fees, as far as I’ve seen.) But it might be different in other countries and dependent on the origin of the bank card, of course.

Tried out Nova once again today after a long break since version 1. I’m a web developer who primarily uses TypeScript and I’m unfortunately still pretty disappointed about Nova. Things like autocompletion and file browsing are significantly slower and more tedious than in VS Code and I can only cover about 50% of the features and extensions I use on a daily basis (e.g. there seems to be no way to find all instances/usages of a function aside from a plain text search).

I’d love for Nova to happen because competition is important and it’d be great to have more native alternatives but in its current state I can’t recommend Nova to anyone yet.