When your digital life vanishes | Hacker News Reader

When your digital life vanishes

newyorker.com

75 pointsbenbreen20 comments

About the "locked" Thoughts.doc file: Shouldn't this be trivially crackable nowadays?

On the subject...of anyone has good recommendations on getting phone data off the device as soon as possible to my own system would be cool.

I'm on immich; photos are my most important.

Haven't found something to offload the on device files - like saved attachments from texts.

For my self and my android, SMB protocol and app Cx File Explorer.

I've used SimpleSSHD on Android across many versions. Lets me mount phone over Wi-Fi using sshfs, so it acts like a normal local filesystem.

Syncthing is the only app i need for syncing files to home computer. No clouds, just your phone and computer (or computers).

I have multiple syncthings between phone and home nas:

- Photos (immich on server/mobile). I use master on phone, so immich don't delete on phone, and then rotate my folders out of syncthing directory and then clean my on device camera photo every few months

- Notes: (Obsidian on server/mobile). flawless

- SyncFolder: random folder to move between the two.

I'm using it too. Unfortunately their Android support is a little rough these days. Their official client stopped being developed and while there are options it isn't straightforward

SyncthingFork and also BasicSync both work without any issues on Android 16 for me.

I backup my iphones to linux using libimobiledevice

the commands I use are:

see if phone is connected:

  lsusb

1) backup entire* device to filesystem:

  idevicebackup2 backup <backup-dir>

2) backup photos/other data:

  ifuse mount -o allow_other /mnt
  rsync -av /mnt <out-dir>

command 1 will create an entire backup of the device, but in a wierd apple format. It can be restored to a clean device though.

command 2 will create a directory containing most of the phone data in an understanable format. for example photos will be in <out-dir>/DCIM, for example DCIM/100APPLE/IMG_0170.HEIC

*: what apple allows you to back up. for example, if you have the kindle app on your phone, neither the app itself, or the kindle books will be backed up. If you restore the backup, you will have to re-download the kindle app, and re-download the book files.

How much user interaction is needed in the phone to make this happen nowadays? I havent used libimobiledevice in ages but I can remember that nm the past in order to get everything your phone would need to request an icloud backup (as most data lived there and not on the device back then) and often the process would just stall if the phone fell asleep.

The lack of selfhosting support on iPhones is the main reason why I'm on android.

IIRC you have to click "trust the device" on your iPhone and then it just works.

IIRC you can't extract app-private directories without root or debug-signed apk. Things "under /sdcard"(in quotes because actual paths move around in typical Google manner) should be accessible from other apps/adb over USB.

Sailfish has a native Nextcloud integration, photos land on your home server without any user action. On iOS it requires opening the app from time to time.

These folder artworks, at the header, are freaking awesome!

If no AI was in use for its creation process, I do so wholeheartedly hope, then every single folder features ideas/message in quite genius attitudes, I believe, and the whole work deserves a physical frame!

Illustration by Carolina Moscoso (https://carolina-moscoso.com/)

The illustrator credits are easier to see in print, easy to miss in this story.

I see! Such a huge... huge.. relief... oh dear gracious sakes...

Art... love still exists! Thank you, dear sanjit, Carolina Moscoso, and Julian Lucas at NewYorker for the ineffably magnificent art... miracles you do...

> If no AI was in use for its creation process, I do so wholeheartedly hope, then every single folder features ideas/message in quite genius attitudes, I believe, and the whole work deserves a physical frame!

And if AI was used, that would decrease your enjoyment?

You might be better off never looking too deeply into how the sausage is made.

> You might be better off never looking too deeply into how the sausage is made.

Saying this on "Hacker News" seems a bit misguided lol

Well, I'm not going to tell serious_angel on which website to idle away their time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com