I don't trust having only local files. Ideally you should have multiple local copies with at least one cloud storage and encrypt everything before you upload, so unless your house catches on fire and your cloud storage also fucks you over at the same time, then you are protected against both risks if they happen as separate incidents.

Also maybe go somewhere in the woods and hide a box of encrypted hard drives there, just to be extra safe. So three backups. Your house, A box buried in the woods, and cloud storage.

You are not too old. I feel the exact same way. Anything worth keeping should be saved locally. Plus storage today is so cheap, there really is no excuse to save exclusively on the cloud.

people just never learn that companies cannot be trusted...time and time again, they work to steal and claim ownership of your intelligence.

You don't need to trust to use cloud services, I copy encrypted backups into the cloud. The only risk is that they don't give it back but that's why you have multiple backups.

Especially trusting cloud storage without a local backup for psyche-critical work - absolutely bonkers

I always get told that they would never take your stuff away, even though there are lots of examples.

Yes we're too experienced and sceptical.

Yes. No one ever listened except the other nerds from our generation. Everyone else was to old to understand at the time and the rest just jumped in because they learned it in preschool.

Yeah, for me cloud storage is one of many backups, but it's just that, a backup. It should never be the original or only. It's there in case your PC shits the bed, not as your prime storage.

i use ms word to save certain things, offline, an older version of office not the new ms office that forces AI. i do that to save certain things, like resumes,,,etc.

No, you aren’t. I only use it because my work makes me to be able to share with everyone in the district.

If you want to back up anything important on someone else's server (cloud), put it all into an encrypted blob. It's not a bad idea to use them to put a copy of your files in a different physical location, but also don't trust them any further than necessary.

Two is one and one is none

And even then, if you make sure to copy the actual file, you'd still depend on them to open it if it's in their proprietary format.

Justified obsession tbh.

I do my writing in markdown. Keeps me from being distracted over formatting. Easily converted to HTML/EPUB for review and editing. git + plaintext + pandoc is a dream.

That's a long way to go for an ad. Good read though.

I don't think they can nuke files from my linux computer.

I use waze and google maps. Although I contribute sometimes with streetcomplete and openstreetmaps, their respective android apps are dog shit at navigating. Certain hiking trails and maybe biking trails though, they might be better but for things like driving cars, traffic reports, nearby attractions, google is still superior.

Edit: fixed bad grammar

Maybe, but it's a well known writer's tool. I don't think they need to push this angle.