If you want to create a hosted folder that folks of wildly varying levels of comfort with tech can throw stuff in and download stuff from, similar to how they might use a Google Drive folder, what do you like using for that?
Like every critique group or writing class I'm in uses Google Drive, but with with more and more AI training going on, I'd love to have suggestions for alternatives should Drive go the way of MS Office.
Self-hosting is a cool option, but probably not scalable to suggest as an alternative here.
and I have no idea their stance on AI. For all I know they've fallen for the grift as well. I believe Protonmail has recently branched out into e2e encrypted collaborative file sharing and stuff, idk if they have a document editor or not.
@pendell They seem to push a lot of AI products, but so far, none of them have appeared on my account. Sadly, it does look like their WorkDrive requires a separate payment (which is fair, but might be a barrier for folks).
@pendell And yeah, Proton Drive sadly doesn't allow you to make a public link for editing/uploading, so whomever you're working with needs their own Proton account. Again, fair, but any friction compared to Google Drive will probably doom an alternative. They get the leg up because most everyone already has a Google account, so it's not seen as a barrier, sigh.
@bob Yeah... I was looking at that after @WizardOfDocs' reply. It looks like the free providers (quite reasonably) don't have public uploads turned on, so I'd need to self-host.
I'm absolutely happy to do so, but just kind of undermines the degree to which I can recommend it as an alternative to others.
every week or so I seriously consider setting up a “spin up easy to reason about groupware solution” for folks who want to nope out of AI but I’m not sure the math works out or if i want to spend my days supporting it.
@cthos Yeah, that's precisely the rub... I'm happy to put in work advocating for my ideals and offering an alternative to AI, but I don't want to commit my life to supporting it.
yup. There’s a very small part of me that thinks running a small hosting business would be “fun”. Get an Oxide rack, wire up autoprovisioners, sob quietly into my keyboard.
But like the masto.host friend seems to be doing well.
I use Mega though I do believe everyone has to have an account and they throttle downloads over like 2gb to dialup speeds unless you pay up. But you get 50gb free, decent encryption, and they have a chat function I've never used since I don't know anyone else with an account there lol. But I do believe you can add other users to a folder so they can all add and delete stuff.
@cthos Yeah, I was looking at that, but it seems like that might take self-hosting. I'm happy to do that, and may do so soon as that solves a number of problems I'm running into, but it's harder for me to suggest it to folks who are less comfortable with tech.
But it's not free, and they keep adding more and more junk to it which makes it slowly less useful over time.
That seems kind of nuts - all I want is to have a collection of directory spaces with files in them which can show up on every computer I use, or which I can share with people, or use to access files shared by other people.
But nope, they want to somehow make it be something else that sounds more sexy and compelling, I guess.
Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️ • • •Like every critique group or writing class I'm in uses Google Drive, but with with more and more AI training going on, I'd love to have suggestions for alternatives should Drive go the way of MS Office.
Self-hosting is a cool option, but probably not scalable to suggest as an alternative here.
Pendell
in reply to Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️ • • •Pendell
in reply to Pendell • • •Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Pendell • • •Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️ • • •SysAdmin1138
in reply to Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️ • • •Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️
in reply to SysAdmin1138 • • •Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️ • • •bob
in reply to Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️ • • •Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️
in reply to bob • • •@bob Yeah... I was looking at that after @WizardOfDocs' reply. It looks like the free providers (quite reasonably) don't have public uploads turned on, so I'd need to self-host.
I'm absolutely happy to do so, but just kind of undermines the degree to which I can recommend it as an alternative to others.
Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️ • • •One cursed solution: a Matrix room that people post stuff in.
Sigh. There's so many options, but I just despair of them being useful to anyone who's outside of the generalized tech bubble.
cthos 🐱
in reply to Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️ • • •Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️
in reply to cthos 🐱 • • •@cthos Yeah, that's precisely the rub... I'm happy to put in work advocating for my ideals and offering an alternative to AI, but I don't want to commit my life to supporting it.
There needs to be something more sustainable.
cthos 🐱
in reply to Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️ • • •yup. There’s a very small part of me that thinks running a small hosting business would be “fun”. Get an Oxide rack, wire up autoprovisioners, sob quietly into my keyboard.
But like the masto.host friend seems to be doing well.
Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️
in reply to cthos 🐱 • • •Pendell
in reply to Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️ • • •Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Pendell • • •Alex, Nevertheless
in reply to Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️ • • •Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Alex, Nevertheless • • •Alex, Nevertheless
in reply to Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️ • • •my host is use09 dot thegood dot cloud, I think they're based in the Netherlands
cthos 🐱
in reply to Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️ • • •Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️
in reply to cthos 🐱 • • •cthos 🐱
in reply to Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️ • • •There are some paid cloud hosts. Also Murena.io (the people who do /e/OS) is just a forked nextcloud and IIRC has the sameish feature.
Edit: I'd check but they're currently having an outage.
cthos 🐱
in reply to cthos 🐱 • • •cthos 🐱
in reply to cthos 🐱 • • •Storage Share
www.hetzner.comCassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️
in reply to cthos 🐱 • • •cthos 🐱
in reply to Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️ • • •silverwizard
in reply to Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️ • •AMS
in reply to silverwizard • • •Clifton Royston
in reply to Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️ • • •Dropbox, of course.
But it's not free, and they keep adding more and more junk to it which makes it slowly less useful over time.
That seems kind of nuts - all I want is to have a collection of directory spaces with files in them which can show up on every computer I use, or which I can share with people, or use to access files shared by other people.
But nope, they want to somehow make it be something else that sounds more sexy and compelling, I guess.