shelled

I just installed it (had to; if I am using the Mac, I'd rather be on the latest OS for security and compatibility reasons), and it is just disgusting. It is more disgusting than the iOS 26 monstrosity.

I mean, how do you even provide constructive feedback to such a pathetic design choice? Not that this company ever deals in feedback (unless it's a strong feedback directly to its wallet).

I do believe they are just exhibiting sheer incompetence and intellectual bankruptcy as a corporation. Is it beginning of an end? I don't know. Do giga corps even die anymore?

I wanted to use them. But they had a bug in SMS sending and it's been a few weeks (or more) and they have not fixed it or been able to fix it. Also, it was not clear whether they use the same setup for recovery/alert SMS (I asked, received no reply). I tried following up with their support for a few days (it's a one-person setup; recently a support person was hired who responds on Discord and is apparently swamped), but it didn't happen. I just tried now and the issue still exists. That seemed like not a good sign. Also - ownership has changed few months ago.

I actually do that. I have two folders one synced up to Dropbox and another to iCloud and they are encrypted with Cryptomator. But I back up the mounted folders i.e data to tarnsap. Besides those encrypted files (fragments?) of Cryptonator were messed up by both iCloud and Dropbox over the last few years. Gratned it could be Restic and Borg (I use these two as well for larger data sets), but for very small data tarsnap has woked well for me and prices are tiny. For a larger data set, I won't pick tarsnap.

If there's an simple but "solid" GUI backup tool with (true) PAYG I'd migrate away from Tarsnap, but there isn't one.

You might want to check this out https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest

I've been using Tarsnap for almost a decade for a small, but very important, personal data subset.

Tarsnap is very resilient; it doesn't do a lot, but what it does is solid. The mailing list is helpful, and you can reach out to its creators directly for prompt, useful responses if that is something you don't want on the mailing list (where names and email addresses are in the clear; use marc.info to search in it).

But if you are trying to start with Tarsnap, you should note a few things from the beginning:

- If you are looking for a completely (or even almost) frictionless backup experience - this is not it. Also, it doesn't have tons of features - which might be a good thing, but you should know and accept it.

- If you're used to tools like Backblaze, CrashPlan, Restic, or Borg, the limited feature set might frustrate you.

- Knowing this in advance will help you set expectations within its feature set. The doc/man pages are great resources once you actually read it.

- It has some quirks (may or may not be bugs) that require tinkering with your settings, env etc. Getting your hands dirty with sample data first is a great way to know Tarsnap.

- Set up your logs and scripts such that you can know/debug things later.

- Naming of your archives is important.

- You'll need at least two keys: a master key with read, write, and delete access on your archives/Tarnsap storage, and a un-passphrased regular key with only "write" permission for backups. Keep both safe, especially the master key. There's "nuke" as well…

- I used its GUI for the longest time but would absolutely not recommend it. It hides a lot, which might come back to bite you, and is not the most polished tool of all. Its last release was 7 years ago.

OP says:

> … If you use it solely to back up the few megabytes of “crown jewels” data we all have lying around"

and I actually use Tarsnap exclusively for my "crown jewels," which are in the early three digit MBs.

- So, unlike what many say, I do believe it is costly for today's storage/bw prices, especially if your data isn't very compressible. Tarsnap's compression is great, but not magic. However, i doesn't cost an exponential bomb either. Killer de-dupe though.

- You must have a plan for what and how much you want to back up, and the expected growth of that data.

- It is definitely not a "fire and forget" tool (and you should never forget your backups anyway).

I was frustrated with it until I gave up on the GUI, embraced the CLI/cron, reduced the amount of data being backed up and excluded (using copy and delete) some data being stored, and accepted what it can't do. Which is not really great but that's what it is.

Glaring omissions, IMHO: very few maintenance features (the scripts listed are not easy to work with), (almost?) no way of knowing what file changed in a certain archive, slow restores (may matter for a bigger data set), and the lack of an updated, polished GUI tool which I think is very important for personal data backup.

My request to cperciva would be: please consider this - while it's inspired by tar and stays close to it, it's also a cloud backup tool. Treating it a bit more like a modern cloud backup tool could be useful. Just my two cents.

I am the OP and I see the post didn't see much traction. Anyway here is my setup:

- All my personal data: Borg (gui: vorta), Restic (gui: Backrest)

- Very important personal data (small subset of all data): Tarsnap (gui: tarsnap-gui)

Sync:

- Personal regular use data data: Dropbox (some private/personal data that I want to be extra careful about gets synced in a Cryptomator folder and in a KeePass file), iCloud (not a lot of files)

- Photo/video: iCloud, Ente

----------

I am also trying to setup e2ee backup/sync on my Koofr a/c with rclone (WIP) for almost all my data - more than "personal" data (but not the system files of course)! Koofr a/c is the lifetime subscription and even they they have a great track record I do not really consider it "lifetime". I also hope they expand Vault (i.e not limited to just only "one" folder)

restic with https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest. I'd give second spot to borg (I use it with Vorta).

I tried KopiaUI couple of times, it's not something I want as a personal backup tool.

Here's a very actively developed GUI https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest - imho it has come the farthest and is the easiest in terms of use and ease. I have tried too many other restic CLIs/GUIs and settled on this.

After this time I must have tried Kopia (via KopiaUI) at least a dozen time and every single time I have never been able to figure out in one glance how it works. A brief idea I have is that you pick a folder and pick where to backup/snapshot it to. There is no (or at least an easy and intuitive) way to have a local backup setup of a set of folder, exclusions, inclusions, a config where you can decide the frequency, retention etc. I did try hard to find that out but nothing. I think it's their deliberate design choice and that's fine - but at least from usability perspective it's anything that is even in the direction of backup tools like restic/backrest, borg/vorta etc.

Hey, first of all if was bad or annoying I would not have began to use it. It's not bad, it's actually good generally speaking and from the functionality point of view. You have done a great job considering you had to deal with one of the most private data on two platforms who are very sceptical about giving data access and in their own different ways. Not to mentioned the kinds of feature you all offer while keeping things e2ee is simply great.

It is more about aesthetics and personal preference point of view. Being mobile developer doesn't help either. The thing is you end up noticing everything that a non-native app misses and skips. Small clunks .. the way something loads and how the transition happens et cetera, some textures, corners, icons, the general UI design philosophies like some shades are simply not going to be the same in a non-native app (unless one is doing pixel to pixel matching which would defeat the purpose of picking a multi platform way to begin with).

Discussing so called "drawbacks" would be doing a disservice to your excellent product and also to your goal. I am sure you had a reason to pick up a common codebase (maybe speed; small team or something else - doesn't matter) and it's really a fine product. It's just about my personal preference.

Thank you for these fine FOSS apps and good luck!

(I still be using Ente Auth fwiw - because there are no better alternatives, let alone a better native alternative :-) 2FAS could have come close but it's not there at all)

It's mostly what I use daily or a lot (except one these are not recurring; I will try to make these recurring once I am financially there again):

- https://objective-see.org/support.html (For https://github.com/objective-see/LuLu et al)

- https://www.thunderbird.net/donate (I hope none of it goes to Mozilla or Firefox. I also hope https://thundermail.com brings something than I can instead pay for, if I can or will decide to afford, instead of intermittent donations)

- https://www.borgbackup.org/support/fund.html (I would want to support https://restic.net as well as I use it so much but they never setup a way - it has been discussed :/)

- https://syncthing.net/donations

- https://github.com/Homebrew/brew#donations

- https://cryptomator.org/donate/

- https://www.patreon.com/db4s

- https://github.com/sponsors/qarmin for https://github.com/qarmin/czkawka

- https://github.com/sponsors/garethgeorge for https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest

- https://keepass.info/donate.html and https://keepassium.com/donate (Mostly the latter) (I had actually moved to StrongBox which did a U-turn on FOSS and then sold to another company. At that point I came back to KeePassium. The KeepPassium author actually took a stand a went FOSS as a principle. I think this is worth noting.)

..and few more.

… …

# The ones I support by paying for one of its services bust mostly because its FOSS app:

- https://vorta.borgbase.com

- http://ente.io (But sadly not for long; because I really can't stand a non-native "photos" app. I just can't! Otherwise it's a great service!)

How much of a motion sickness one would normally experience on giant cargo ships? Do they also toss and turn in storms like small boats?

Hey dang, do you do this manually or semi-manually or is it just automated from your a/c?

You don’t "read" audiobooks. You listen to them. Big difference - not better or worse, just not the same. When it comes to listening, I Love podcasts - esp. with multiple hosts/guests. Solo ones work too, if they feel like conversations and not recitals.

Audiobooks are not for me. I’ve tried. Reading hits different. But sure, for self-help, productivity, coding and shit you need to use them, so you use them. Interestingly, the biggest audiobook junkies I know are also heavy readers. They know the difference—and they don’t mix the two.

Is there a way to find out current average/going price of shares (I have ESOPs; I have not yet exercised and was laid of sometimes ago) of an unlisted US company? I would also not like the company to find out (if possible).

Can I even sell in secondary market? I do not live in USA. Can the company stop me from selling and also refuse to buy it back themselves?

I would rather prefer an app which gives me an option to sync via a service of my choice (at least some well established ones) e.g. Dropbox, Netxcloud, maybe for someone it could be even Google Drive, or their own sync if they have e2ee. etc.

> syncs to iOS

It just an OS so I would put it as "is available on OS"

> but not via iCloud

But the sync options are not limited to iCloud.

I was able to use nv (nvALT was a fork) before the development stopped and people slowly figured out it stopped. The website is still up https://notational.net and the last binary is still up for download. It worked for a crazy long time as it was. I am not sure but iirc there were some "stability" patches, in the original nv, or not. Then nvALT also stopped and then Brett started on something else and that kinda took a lot of time, really a long time (might have been released now but not sure). That is when I lost track of that lineage of note apps - the nvX - - the ones I started on. That was the reason my next was Simplenote and I stuck with it for really long.

After leaving Simplenote I could never really find a successor. Kept jumping from one app to another - UpNote (very electron), FS Notes (very unstable; come across a bug every other day that it's tiring), then Bear (might move to it, maybe), Joplin (no sadly) etc and what not. Now I just try to use something that lets me keep notes in a folder and use it but then iOS becomes a mess unless I use iCloud. I could never find another simple note taking app. I wish Automattic took privacy seriously and kept the development of Simplenote afresh and maybe charged for it.

Maybe I am not supposed to find that one note taking app for me. Maybe it doesn't exist. That makes sense. I think it's about notes and not the note apps? Keep the notes and apps are a-changin'.

These are my personal/anecdotal observations, of course, for a state I love.

Compared to many other better states and cities, the places in Kerala have this combination of low expenses, good government/public health care. It’s utter shit in most of India — including other rich states like Karnataka (~Bangalore). The place has no or less hostility to outsiders, a general non-RW political atmosphere, and being less polluted or free from it. While Tamil Nadu (~Chennai) is ahead of Kerala in many ways, it kind of falls behind on integration points and weather (that's just a personal preference).

I see one more difference there (this is kind of specific, and I just wanted to take an example) — all over India, people are scared of cops. Severe chronic fear of the police (from the British times; maybe continued). You don’t get in their way, you don’t talk to them, you don’t argue with them, and you hope they never notice you exist. Mostly! Not in Kerala (and to some extent in Tamil Nadu as well) — in Kerala, police in most cases don’t get that some kind of feared reverence at all. It has always heartening to see police getting questioned by locals there when they demand something from the people. I am someone originally from the Indian North, and it was an alien experience — just like seeing government/public hospitals in villages and small towns that are well-equipped and functioning.

The thing about protest culture and the so-called union culture that right-wingers and/or the "economically progressive" folks accuse Kerala of — is actually a highly educated populace (very close to 100%; let that sink in — because we are talking about India) standing up for their rights and not allowing either the corporates or the government to steam-roll them. Is that ideal? I don't think so. But then they easily forget that Kerala always had a left-leaning ideology and India’s centre never had any left majority Govt (hell, not even significant representation), which means the state has always been at odds with the centre—and still did well literally on its own.

The Indian right-wing loves to hate on Kerala (you might see some right here; veiled or direct; or not; and that's alright - I guess, people just like and dislike things) — calling the state and its people with left-bashing slurs and abuses. There have been concerted efforts to flare up the Hindu-Muslim divide in the state, which has worked almost everywhere — with great success in the North India (which is the mostly uneducated, mostly conservative, mostly poor and backward India) and to good success in Karnataka (~Bangalore) and Maharashtra (~Mumbai). These last two are among the richer states of India, while the North is generally a proper shit-hole (I am originally from there).

One can go on and keep counting the majestically built homes that are empty most of the year because the well-off occupants mostly stay out of the state or India or attribute everything to the Gulf. But the bottom line is it is much better than the hellhole that most of India is. They also conveniently forget that it has been in direct and active trade contact with the rest of the world (especially Europe) from very old times. The state has one of the oldest mosques and churches in the world (not just India). I have seen the tech industry of Kerala very closely. There are some boutique software places in that state - not very big (except one kinda famous FOSS photos, 2fa app shop), some service industry but not gigantic like in other states et cetera. Do I have hopes from the place? Yes. Will it be fast? I doubt it.

Do their socio-economic-political choices have their drawbacks and unflattering outcomes? Yes, of course. But I think Kerala state and its people have realised one thing—that by virtue of being in a third-world country like India, they have two options: either keep working and keep getting better at a slower pace while maintaining a better "quality of life" compared to almost all of the rest of India or give in and become a sweatshop like a lot of India currently is and for them if that means moving out of India to do work and earn money and send money back home then so be it.

My friend worked for Amazon in India (software). He was often on 24x7 "on calls", which is touted as "good" here (because how else will you "learn"), during his 3rd or 4th week. By third night he was vomiting and had to visit the doctor. His manager called and had asked whether he had brought his laptop with him. His mother forced him to resign next day (he is from an extremely rich kind of family though). It is common here in most companies and among famous MNCs it is especially known in Amazon and Uber in India.

What shocks more is these are the companies that can "follow the sun" w/o breaking a drop of fucking sweat!

I have lost too many interviews just because I clearly asked for this, I always do, and I am doing it even now while I have been without a job after taking a year gap (which makes getting calls already difficult esp. with this AI and vibe onslaught). I am not giving up on this. I personally have never agreed to this which has caused lots of confrontations and stress(!!); a major source of my burnout WITHOUT ever doing the 24x7 on-call - so by just fighting it and keeping it away from me alone I was burnt out to the bits. It took me finally seeking medical advice to realise I was burnt out.

I hope this is not sounding like dramatic but even now when I have been resting, travelling for a year the mere mention of words like Splunk, VictorOps (same as Splunk iirc), PagerDuty give me minor trigger attack kinda sensation - make me very agitated.

But this is so common here. So common that it is considered one of the realities, truths. Yet, I have never understood, how, how can one agree to this? How? Is it some kind of social (if not racial) slave mentality? Is it some kind of grand coercion that they have no escape from? Or maybe it's just generation after generation subjecting the next generation to what they were subjected to while the stakeholders in the richer countries (because that is the structure) demand of this implicitly as they are stopped by health and safety laws from subjecting their underlings in their own developed home nations maybe.

Thank you. I think that's exactly what it is. Fear but I might want to get past them and yes it could go either way, but still. It's just that I am waking up to it kinda at a very wrong time.

This is helpful. Thank you!

I am writing a long post. I hope some people read it.

A very distant relative of mine lives in Germany. He is from India (where I live). He met his German wise in Australia where she was working and they married and later they settled in Germany. He has been asking me to come to Germany for work and start exploring work there and I have always been hesitant about it. Lots of things come to mind - a lot of them are unfounded and/or are just the apprehension of the unknown I am guess. One of the fear is I do not want to settle in Germany. I want to live a decent healthy life and probably return back to India (I don't know after how long; I have a strong feeling/assumption that I will be lonely there and may not be able to connect and I am scared of it) so it seems that I will have no savings essentially when I come back as I have assumed based on stereotypical description or media portrayals fo salaries in Germany/EU.

How is it for skilled foreigners in Germany as a job market currently? Esp. seeing EU is warming up to self sustenance/dependence etc. Are the jobs there? Are those foreigners welcome? This is a tricky question but is there a trend of preference of source geographies for those skilled jobs in Germany? Also, I am in software with 10+ years of experience and my last drawn salary in India was ~70K Euro (in INR) and 5% bonus and 25% startup stock which value at zero now and I was able to save a huge portion or % of it (I know I won't be able to save that % in EU).

Are the salaries really bad? If I am not able to save 1500-2000 EU a month as a single person with no luxurious needs at all there, it may not make much sense for me if I plan to return to my home country eventually).

I am kinda apprehensive about the resurgence of the so called "right" there (which is happening, no happened, in my home country as well but I am a native here :|) - how is that? From a distance everything looks very problematic and scary or rather "very risky".

What I am stuck at is - I actually believe this is not something I can just play on "I won't know until I actually do that". I guess I am being too risk averse and maybe very narrow-minded or paranoid.

I would love to hear this from the locals either native or the ones who are immigrants in tech there.

PS. I apologise if anything sounds absurd or untoward. I do not mean to start an argument or something. I just want to hear about it.

PPS. If a single person with no family falls sick in Germany and has sufficient money (not "rich" money) and health insurance, can they just be admitted in the hospital (assuming hospitalisation was needed and doctors okayed it) and that person be taken care of? Or will they demand a "caretaker" family or friend to be present in the hospital always (that's kind of a requirement here in India) and the person can trust the system to do that? (This is my ONE BIG fear of remaining in India, esp. in old age as someone with no immediate family at all - I know this is counter to what said that I might return if I immigrate).

This reminded me of WorldCoin and it was sad to see it's still trading 0.01 above its all time low. I had expected it to go much much down further.

My introduction to it was at a local mall here. A person just approached and me and I politely said "I don't want it" assuming it was the credit cards or donations and he chuckled and said "sir, it's not credit cards" but I kept moving and then he pointed me to that creepy looking shiny globe/round thing. The moment I saw "Sam Altman" mentioned on a print-out kept there, I couldn't run faster out of there. I later read about it and found out this time around the creepy bugger was out scanning everyone's iris.

I think there are many types of scams after all. Good scam, bad scam, legit scam, illegitimate scam et cetera.

- Trying to get over my procrastination and finally start (the standard way of) prepping for software dev (staff/etc) level interviews after having taken a considerable number of months as a gap

- An idea of a platform to connect sports venues to players. (In a way that is better and richer than the only/shitty option available in my geography. Why do I call that service shitty? They have been around for almost a decade or close to that by now and they are still shitty and unstable and barely useable). With a bit of differentiation - instead of individual and venue bookings (the service that offers right now) - connect venues and groups where payment is taken care of already (no running around collecting payments and worrying about no shows and ignoring them in future them/etc). We were reaching towards a demo kinda product but the friend on the backend side got bored of software and started focussing on stock trading where he is sadly doing spectrally bad

- Also did a bit of work on trying to connect users with the laundry list of (e)bicycles, e-scooters et cetera providers (i.e how there are common booking platforms for all airlines; or for buses; etc) so that they won't have to install all the apps until it finally reached our skulls that maybe those services are looking for a lock-in so they would never open up their APIs and we lacked perseverance and resources to force them to adhere to the Govt suggested broad inventory db mechanism in my country. Basically we started on it without any research.

The problem with me is - software engineering/coding (I have been told I am not bad at it though)/platforms/libraries/etc excite me fuck all. But problem solving does. I should not have been a software engineer really. So interviews get tricky. While I can (and have) clear interviews at early stage startups, the work-life balance they offer is horrendous, but MNC/etc ask for every thing I have never used and will never use, or anybody ever will (mostly), that means thorough prep. I am just ranting, ignore it.

BitWarden has lost the trust. Besides recently there was a blocker bug on iOS and on Reddit I found out it happened earlier as well. They didn't even want to debug it and when I suggested this and asked whether they have any issue logged on Github where I could provide logs they went radio silent. Follow ups went completely unanswered. And yeah before that they had given a solution (because reinstall/re-login nothing had worked) - export your data, delete your account, create the account again, and re-import your data - that "should" work. Honestly it was worse than "restart your computer".

I guess it's time for another FOSS player here. It's fine, such things are cyclical I guess. Happened to Lastpass and Authy and someday it will happen to Ente and 2FAS and so on.

That's what they say in their T&C and sample this https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/community/topic/unable-to-se...

Then actually went to a reddit post and repeated the same things there.

Hey, thanks. I don't think they are good on the privacy front (they actually share/sell your data with marketing and ad partners; at least they are upfront about it in their P&Cs).

Otherwise it would have been perfect for me as I could get phone support (no charges) and "walk to their office" support as well :D

Oh is it so? What are your shortlists?

I am not sure I will get any recommendations here. I posted at a time when usually majority of HNers (i.e US) goes to sleep :D

I worked at a US startup from my world country and that company dealt exclusively with PII (i.e. IDs, face etc) of people, including from the armed forces, of NA and some European countries.

I had access to any data I wanted to see, download on my work laptop (we all worked remotely). I didn't have to ask anyone, I didn't have to justify it, and AFAIK it was not audited. Logged? I don't know, maybe it was. I had sent mail once regarding to a director and SVP and never received even an ack. Oh by the way, everybody had access, not just me. For that no other access type was required either. Company email was sufficient. And IIRC even the stage env. had product data and stage was truly fair game.

No, I did not misuse and used it handful of times for debugging purposes. I doubt anybody did.

> you want actual non-revocable ownership now. Be entered on the list of shareholders.

Yup. Wish I (and a lot of my ex colleagues) knew that and didn't accept below market salaries with those ESOPs.

We got ESOPs from a USA startup which has an India office (and subsidiary which employed us) and was laid off from the company. A colleague (was laid off) tried to sell it outside and was blocked by startup lawyer. Very soon those ESOPs will expire/lapse (not sure that's the term) if not exercised. Most of us (actually none of us) can reasonably exercise that. Even at that low "strike price" that was offered to us the cost to company alone will be more than 2 years' salary of most of us (for some even more) and then the income tax (and then maybe capital gains tax) will hit us which might actually be more than that strike price amount. It's in USD and we earn/earned in INR - almost ~85x difference as of now (notionally speaking).

The startup doesn't offer to buy it themselves either. They never did. I stayed there for two years and others stayed for 4-5-6 years and they don't allow us to sell it in secondary market either. So yeah, it's lost. Even if we want to, we can't exercise - we simply can't afford it.

So yes, you are so right!