The War on Local Storage (People Hosting Their Files Locally and Privately)
Lately I've been patiently assessing the storage market because I want another backup drive (a backup of backups). I have many important stories to tell in years to come and nothing should be able to prevent them from coming out, not even house fires, break-ins etc. The extra disks aren't some "dead man's switch" or for "insurance files"; they're useful in case of data corruption or accidental deletion. Historically I've been doing well when it comes to preserving old data; I still have with me data from the 1990s.
I visited a number of stores over the past 3 months. I compared prices (typically per TB). I even checked the local Sunday Market in case they have some 'treasures'. At the end I found that I could get a TB of storage for less than 20 pounds and it was from the manufacturer I trust the most, based on personal experience. So I made an order and will pick up the drive next week while the wife waits at KENJI.
During my 3-month research period I was trying to understand what had happened to the storage market in recent years (I've not purchased external storage in years, I did replace my internal SSD storage in 2023 though; my laptop has been up and running without reboots since then). The prices didn't come down by much, larger drives are hard to access at stores (you must order them online or order at the store), and - with the exception of Argos - the biggest one can find readily available is 4 TB. That's not more than it was more than a decade ago!
Some years ago there were some decent articles online discussing how new laptops don't tend to have much "local" (real) storage and instead urge people to upload files. We now know that the UK Government demands access to these files (probably the US Government and other governments as well, but they're less transparent about it).
It's like they try to mentally tame us to believe storing things locally is dangerous and "backup" means sending copies of everything to GAFAM. It's not just a "Chromebook thing"; many laptops with Windows are nowadays the same and Apple wants to build a storage empire with other people's files, even from their phones. From a political point of video, Apple stands to gain a lot from it, as do Google and Microsoft. They're becoming weapons or instruments of imperial control. They let governments target people or have direct access to their files, hence to their minds and their future output.
When people refuse to use a "smart" phone that is connected to a network (i.e. location-tracked) all the time, they are engaging in an act of resistance. The same goes for people who host all their files locally, and not on some system with something like Recall (surveillance in "hey hi" clothing). The governments of the world will shout "terrorism" or "pedophilia" or whatever dog whistle awakens moral panic. A lot of the politicians who do this and say this are themselves implicated in actual child sex trafficking. Quit listening to their nonsense. Their drivel is pure projection. The ordinary person does not hitch the Lolita Express like the current US President and Bill Epsteingate, who had staff in his own home hoarding and spreading child pornography.
The shops online and offline will keep trying to sell us "bargain" laptops with too little internal storage and 'free' online storage (with Microsoft, Google etc.), but in order for them to deny access to mass storage "offline" they'd need a whole lot of DRM and new restrictions.
There's nothing wrong with controlling one's computing. You cannot change anything in this world without some (at least) minimal level of privacy. Happy Independence Day. █