Are you looking for selective sync, and just over the LAN or over the internet too?

If just LAN, there’s many Windows sync tools for this with varying levels of complexity and capability. Even just a simple batch file with a copy command.

I’ll often just setup a Robocopy job for something that’s a regular sync.

If you open files over a network connection, they stay remote and remain remote when you save. Though this isn’t best practice (Windows and apps are known for having hiccups with remotely opened files).

Two other approaches:

1. ResilioSync enables selective sync. If you change a file you’ve synchronized locally, the changed file will sync back to the source.

2. Mesh network such as Wireguard, Tailscale, Hamachi. Each enables you to maintain an encrypted connection between your devices that the system sees as a LAN (with encryption). If you’re only using Windows, I’d recommend starting with Hamachi, it’s easier to get started. If mobile device support is needed, use Wireguard or Tailscale (Tailscale uses Wireguard, but easier to setup).

Hahahahaha, made me actually laugh out loud. Glad I’m not reading at work.

Take your upvote.

Damn you, I’m having to stifle a laugh here.

I don’t believe the ISP would have legal standing to take you to court, as they don’t hold the copyright.

They’re in the middle, being told hy copyright holders that someone using their service is violating copyright, and they must “do something”.

Eventually they may shut off your service, but I haven’t heard of it happening since the early 2000’s.

I refuse to subscribe to apps. Devs doing so for no good reason get 1 star, and I delete the app.

Screw em.

Now, if an app has a back end, or has to host a resolver (Resilio Sync, Tailscale, etc), or provide other necessary services, that’s different.

Lol, right?

Here, let’s standardize on one system that’s centrally managed and opaque.

🤦🏼

A much better solution would be to host their own XMPP servers with encryption required (replicated around the world of course), and allowing only their own-compiled clients to connect, and add some other validation mechanisms (MFA, etc). Like initially requiring a physical presence registration of a device.

Also run the app in a container, which has been available on Android since at least 2010 (my company was doing it then).

Signal is alright for the average person, but it’s got it’s own weaknesses that are unacceptable for an organization like a business, or especially military.

Lol, run with it! It would be memorable, and people would talk about it.

“Could” is a very strong word with lots of assumptions.

Have you never read anything from antiquity? Even the Bible is a good start, you see the stories of how humanity has always been, and will be for a long time to come still.

Though it’s easily arguable humanity has already come a long way, and continues to improve (though non-linearly, naturally). Just your post here demonstrates this. You, me, and a bunch of other people, from anywhere in the world, are discussing these ideas, practically in real time. This was impossible as recently as 35 years ago.

Worldwide privation (notably starvation) has dropped 30%+ in the last 10 years.

The difference from my parent’s generation, to me, in the west is staggering. Infant and mother mortality dropped a staggering 90% from their birth to mine. They grew up always hungry, I did not. They saved everything: pieces of wire, string, old worn out parts, etc, because even if you had money, that stuff wasn’t necessarily even in the store. While I can order just about anything, from anywhere in the world, and have it in two days. They couldn’t get air mail across the Atlantic that fast. As an example, during WWII, they couldn’t move all the soldier’s homeward-bound mail, so they microfilmed it all in Britain, shipped the film back, and re-printed it there to be mailed. Today we can ship almost anything by plane to much of the world.

Cheese. Don’t forget cheese.

Wine and it’s compatriots too.

Cloud can be surprisingly cost effective, as part of a 3-2-1 backup.

Check out storj.io

If it’s powered off, you’ll have no idea when it dies. And they do die just sitting there.

I’ve actually had more failures of drives sitting around than ones running constantly.

Tailscale is pretty easy, though I dislike the management console is via their servers/services.

Wireguard (which Tailscale uses) is fully self-hostable.

Just that you don’t need a beast of a machine (with it’s higher cost and power consumption) to just serve files at reasonable performance. If you want to stream video, you’ll need greater performance.

For example, my NAS is ten years old, runs on ARM, with maybe 2gigs of ram. It supposedly can host services and stream video. It can’t. But it’s power draw is about 4 watts at idle.

My newer (5 year old) small form factor desktop has a multi-core Intel cpu, true gigabit network card, a decent video card, with an idle draw of under 12 watts, and peaks at 200w when I’m converting video. It can easily stream videos.

My gaming desktop draws 200w at idle.

My SFF and gaming rig are both overkill for simple file sharing, and both cost 2x to 4x more than the NAS (bought the NAS and SFF second hand). But the NAS can’t really stream video.

Power draw is a massive factor these days, as these devices run 24/7.

RPi is great for it’s incredibly low power draw. The negative of RPi is you still need enclosure, and you’ll have drives that draw power attached to it. In my experience once I’ve built a NAS, RPi doesn’t draw significantly less than my SFF with the same drives installed, as it seems the drives are the greatest consumer. As I mentioned, my SFF with 1TB of storage draws 12 watts, and RPi will draw upwards of 8 watts on its own (my Pi Zero draws 2, but I’d never use it for a NAS). It’s all so close that for me the downside of RPi isn’t worth the difference in power.

Check out storj.io

My experience with all the media servers is not great.

Popped up Jellyfin once again just last weekend and the quality was not great, and it had issues streaming. Just like every time I’ve tried any media server.

The answer for me is a media player pc at the TV running something like Kodi.

Remember, 3-2-1 is all about not fully trusting any one backup.

I have 4 replicants of my data at home (because any one of them could die at any time) with an online backup. Not the best setup, but it’s what I can do at the moment.

As for RAID, that’s a solution for a specific problem(s).

Consider how the NAS will be used. Is it just file storage, or will you want to stream from it?

If just file storage, you can use lighter hardware.

I’m running a 5 year old Dell Small Form Factor desktop as my NAS/media server. It’s power draw is under 12 watts unless I’m converting files. There’s room for 3 data drives (boot drive is M2). It has no problem streaming, unlike my consumer NAS. And it cost way less.

Nah, just us tech heads that are willing to put in the effort (and I’m not, Linux on the desktop has a long way to go, and I use Linux for all sorts of services).

99% of users can’t be bothered to understand the concept of a web browser, and that there are different ones. Switch them to any Linux distro and they’d freeze like deer in headlights.

Source: decades of providing support.

And yes, dumb move my MS, not sure what they’re trying to do here.

That’s a lot of words coming from Kowalski! 😁

Now where’s the dynamite?

All I get is a static page. Wonder what privacy-violating scripts they’re running.