This is a tough one. The problem with local only backups is, what if there’s a fire?

I use Amazon Glacier to store my pictures. It’s $0.0036 / GB per month, so I pay less than $2/month for ~535 GB of storage that I’m using right now. There is also a cost for downloading, but if I need it, I’m going to be happy to pay it (and the costs aren’t crazy). Uploads are free.

(The other problem with Glacier is that it’s not really an end-user-friendly experience, nor is it something easily automated. I use SimpleAmazonGlacierUploader, a Java program someone wrote, to do it. You can also upload to S3 and have it archive things to Glacier automatically - I’ve never tried this but it should work.)

I considered getting my brother or a friend to build two storage servers (with RAID5 or something) that we’d each keep at home, and just sync to each other. Good if you have a friend or family member willing to do it (or at least host your offsite box). Down sides: Cost to build it, time to build and maintain it, cost to replace things that break, plus cost for electricity. I’ve been using Glacier for many years, so by now maybe I would have spent less on that theoretical backup system, but I also did not have to worry about it.

Yeah, sometimes it got a little nasty about other people on reddit, which I was never a fan of. It was supposed to be in good fun, but sometimes people got carried away OR people would start posting every single question that was asked. (For example, I can poke fun at the people who just started riding a bike in their 20s and are now wondering about getting into a professional racing career, but sometimes people would repost what I thought were completely valid questions - no one knows everything, especially when they’re new to something. Fortunately those latter posts rarely got many upvotes or comments.)

Overall though it was generally a lot of fun. And honestly they were probably the most knowledgeable, helpful group if you had a detailed cycling question.

No, I didn’t, thanks for the tip. Subbed! I might drop the other one now.

I do miss /r/bicyclingcirclejerk. I loved the absurdly fake bragging and having fun with the stereotypes. Then one day we realized quite a few of us actually ride Cannondales, and that made it even funnier.

I can’t believe two people downvoted your comment.

You’re right about contributing.

As for the filtering, I’m not sure how I feel about that - I use the web interface on my computer and an app on my phone and tablet. I’d prefer them to have similar results. But I see the point you’re making; it could be curated by user instead of a massive algorithm for everyone.

I follow a sub that’s all reposts from reddit. Occasionally I think about replying to something, but then I just go, “What’s the point? OP isn’t here.” I don’t recall ever seeing anyone else respond to any of the crossposts, either. The community is c/bicycletouring@lemmit.online if anyone is curious, which is a pretty niche topic to start with.

I’m not convinced it’s adding anything to the Lemmy experience, but at least those are clearly marked as crossposts and are all posted by one account, so it’s easy enough to ignore if I wanted.

On the “all” thing - remember that reddit has a mode, which is the default, that’s between Lemmy’s “truly, everything all” and “subscribed”. In this mode, you’d get popular posts on subs that had opted in to allowing them to hit that page (or didn’t opt out, I don’t remember).

/r/hockey is a good example - their posts usually generally stayed in the sub, but their Super Bowl post (and occasionally others) would usually hit reddit’s front page and bring in a ton of people who weren’t subbed to /r/hockey.

This was a good feature of reddit, I hope Lemmy eventually gains something similar.

It’s possible I misunderstood your last goal, but if you’re planning to have Lemmy comments posted back to reddit, I suspect that wouldn’t go over well with reddit’s admins after they figure it out.

Of course it’s just my view, I don’t know what people are actually doing. But I’ve seen comments that I thought were good discussions of the topic at hand downvoted for describing the other side of an issue, even if the commenter doesn’t agree with it. To me the only reasons to downvote are things like trolls, off topic, personal attacks, racism, homophonic, and the like.

There’s definitely a “downvote if you disagree” ethos here. There’s not even a pretense of “this contributes to the conversation, even if I disagree” reason for upvoting.

I know this is how it worked in practice on reddit, but at least the rule was that you were supposed to upvote contributions and downvote things that didn’t contribute, and at least a few people followed that rule (or maybe only me).

I wouldn’t be surprised if that drives some people away - they see a bunch of downvotes on their comments and think people don’t want to hear from them (even if there are more upvotes than downvotes).