VioletPixel

đŸ€– Perils of Living In the Future

Stephanie K. Baer at The San Francisco Standard:

Glasses and dishes had been removed from kitchen cabinets and left elsewhere. The dishwasher, refrigerator, and washing machine were scratched. Dishwasher racks were bent and removed. Wooden furniture was scratched and stained. Bathroom tiles were chipped. A shoe rack and several pairs of shoes were missing from a locked bedroom closet.

[...]

In a lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court Tuesday, Donovan alleges that employees of the Bot Company rented his home “under false pretenses” to conduct prototype testing on robots they’re training to do household chores.

There are several other Airbnb hosts with similar experiences.

No flying cars, but we've got robots who come inside and ruin your stuff. What a timeline.

đŸ’Ÿ Backblaze, You Had One Job

Turns out Backblaze no longer backs up cloud files—not even cloud files that are already downloaded and stored locally on your computer. Worse, they quietly shipped this change in a minor point update and hoped no one would notice:

Release Version 9.2.2.877

[...]

  • The Backup Client now excludes popular cloud storage providers from backup, including both mount points and cache directories. This prevents performance issues, excessive data usage, and unintended uploads from services like OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, iDrive, and others. This change aligns with Backblaze’s policy to back up only local and directly connected storage.

That "others" includes iCloud Drive, which is where I happen to keep most of my stuff. My important stuff. The stuff I trusted Backblaze to back up.

Backblaze also has a new banner on their old instructions that explain how to back up cloud files before this change, like the one on their instructions for iCloud Drive:

NOTE:
iCloud's most recent update prevents Backblaze from backing up files that iCloud synced.

To back up these files, download them to another local location where Backblaze can read them.

First, that's a baldfaced lie. There's no iCloud update that prevents Backblaze from backing up iCloud files. There's similar wording on their page for Google Drive:

Google Drive's most recent update prevents Backblaze from backing up files that Google Drive synced.

And their page for OneDrive:

OneDrive's most recent update prevents Backblaze from backing up files that OneDrive synced.

Bullshit. Apple, Google, and Microsoft didn't release updates at the same time across multiple operating systems that stopped Backblaze from backing up their cloud files. Backblaze made the choice to not back these files up. Backblaze made the choice to not tell their users about it outside the third bullet point in a minor point release. Backblaze made the choice to put these banners on their support articles and knew they were lying through their teeth by doing so. Other backup software has the ability to back up iCloud Drive and other cloud files just fine; there's nothing preventing Backblaze from doing the same.

Second, the content of the original instructions remains below these warnings, but none of it applies anymore. It would be easy for someone to skip over one of these warnings, read the instructions below, and think their cloud files are backed up when they're not. That's shameful and irresponsible.

When I learned about all this I checked Backblaze's file restore tool and confirmed all of my iCloud Drive files were no longer available to restore even though I explicitly configured iCloud Drive on my Mac to keep a full local copy of every file.

It's really important to have my iCloud Drive files backed up because sync is not a backup, as Backblaze's own blog explains:

While cloud sync is great for giving you 24/7 access to your files and enabling collaboration, it is not a trustworthy backup solution. Here’s why:

  1. Tiered pricing discourages usage: Typically, these services have tiered pricing, meaning you pay for the amount of data you store with the service, or for tiers of data that you are allowed to use. Odds are, if you are using the free tier of a syncing service, you have a lot of data on your computer that’s not syncing because you’re trying to manage your usage to avoid paying more.
  2. Data outside the service is vulnerable: Only the files, folders, or directories you put into the sync service are synced. The rest of the data on the computer is not.
  3. Data within the service can be deleted and lost forever: If there is data loss (let’s say you share a file with someone and they simply delete it), it may be lost forever. Sometimes these services have a version history feature, meaning you’re able to recover an earlier version of your work (before your friend or coworker deleted it).
  4. Data in sync services is vulnerable to ransomware and malware: If your computer is attacked by a bad actor and your sync service automatically synchronizes after the attack, your synced files are also corrupted. With a backup solution (discussed below) with longer version history, you can simply roll back to an earlier backup before the attack occurred.

We often hear people say, “I don’t need backup. I use Dropbox.” But, that’s an assumption to leave in the past. Where sync services ensure that a certain set of data is the same across multiple devices, backup ensures that all or most of the data on one device is backed up elsewhere.

It's a huge problem when the backup service you trust to back up your files stops backing up your files. It's an even bigger problem when they make that change as quietly as possible, without letting you know, and lie about the reason why.

These changes—both the decision making process that led to it and the way it was implemented—have completely shattered my trust in Backblaze. Beyond their computer backup, we also used their B2 storage service to backup our NAS, but now I wouldn't trust them or any of their products or services with a single byte of my data or anyone else's.

I just finished removing Backblaze from all of our devices and deleting our Backblaze accounts. If you use Backblaze I strongly recommend you seek an alternative.

Our new backup solution

Our household has the following devices that need to be backed up:

The iPhones and iPads use the only practical backup solution for iOS and iPadOS devices: iCloud Backup.

Our five Macs back themselves up to our Synology NAS using Time Machine for local backups. After some extensive research, I decided on Arq backup software for our Macs and rsync.net for offsite backups.

Note that this approach isn't as easy to set up or maintain as Backblaze. If you're looking for a more-or-less drop in Backblaze replacement, I recommend you give the Arq Premium trial a try. I'm not affiliated with them in any way, but I used the trial quite a bit during my research and found it to be a solid option when I tested it.

Arq is available in two flavors. You can pay once for the backup software itself and use it with the cloud provider/server of your choice (including a a five-computer family pack license), or you can choose Arq Premium: a subscription service that includes the Arq software and Arq's own cloud backup storage bundled together (at time of writing Arq uses Google Cloud Storage behind the scenes and offers 1TB of storage for up to five computers).

Arq Premium was tempting, but ultimately I wanted a unified and more flexible offsite backup destination than Arq Premium or S3-compatible storage providers could offer (shout out to S3compare.io as a very useful tool during my research, though!). If I went with Arq Premium I wouldn't be able to backup our Synology to it, and would have had to find a separate offsite storage provider for it. That's more complexity and accounts than I want to juggle.

Regarding cloud files (the ones Backblaze says they can't back up), Arq backs them up just fine. On a Mac, cloud files that haven't been downloaded to your computer show up with a cloud icon next to them in the Finder. If you try to open or access a cloud file, the OS automatically downloads the file and, when the download is complete, the cloud icon is removed and the file opens normally.

Arq lets you decide how cloud files should be handled on each computer with a, 'When a dataless ("cloud-only") file is encountered,' setting that has three options:

The first two are self-explanatory. The third, "materialize," tells Arq to trigger a download of any cloud file it comes across so it can then back it up.

I, personally, have two Macs signed in to my iCloud account:

I keep a local copy of everything in iCloud Drive on my MacBook Air by keeping the "Optimize Mac Storage" setting in iCloud Drive's settings turned off. I also keep my entire photo library stored locally by setting the "Download Originals to this Mac" option enabled in Photos. Finally, Arq's "cloud-only" setting is set to "materialize" on my MacBook Air to make sure all of my cloud files are present and available for offsite backups.

On my MacBook Neo I have the opposite setup. That Mac has a smaller internal drive and is often offline, so I have iCloud Drive and Photos set to optimize my Neo's storage, which means things will only be downloaded locally when I need them. Likewise, in Arq, I have the "cloud-only" setting set to "ignore" because I know those cloud files are being backed up via my MacBook Air, so I don't need to worry about them on my Neo.

Beyond Macs, our Synology used to back up to Backblaze B2, but it now uses Hyper Backup to back up to our rsync.net server. One annoying thing about Hyper Backup when using it with an rsync server is that it doesn't support SSH key authentication. I was hoping to turn password authentication off on our rsync.net server for security reasons, but until Hyper Backup gets its act together I'm forced to leave it on (with an absurdly long password).

I chose rsync.net because they have an experts-only plan that works well for our needs. In exchange for cheaper storage, they provide a fully-functional rsync.net server with the following caveats:

That's all fine by me, but anyone who isn't technically inclined will probably consider some or all of that a dealbreaker.

One other important consideration when choosing our cloud backup provider was the physical location of the data. There were a few options that looked promising until I realized the only practical server location was in Seattle. We live in Portland, and if the big one hits I want our data to be a good distance away from the Pacific Northwest. rsync.net's Denver location is an excellent balance between geographical distance/safety and latency.

Another important thing to note about backup solutions in general is how they handle backup history and retention. For example, if a file accidentally gets deleted today, but you don't notice it's missing until three months from now, you want the ability to go back to a backup from three months ago and retrieve the file. That's one of the big reasons sync is not a backup; changes and deletions are synced immediately. Some cloud sync providers offer version history, but it's usually limited or restricted (e.g., only 30 days, costs extra, etc.).

With a normal rsync.net account, the idea is that you get the files you want backed up onto your rsync.net server and backup history is handled by ZFS snapshots. However, with an experts-only account you don't get free ZFS snapshots, which means you either need to configure ZFS snapshots yourself or make sure historical backups and retention are handled in another way.

I chose the latter approach. Both Arq on the Macs and Hyper Backup on our Synology can be configured to keep historical backups and prune old versions as they age. This provides fine-grained client-side control instead of a one-size-fits-all solution on the server, which works best for us. We can, for example, keep more granular history for our Macs but less granular history for our Synology. Thus, I have not configured ZFS snapshots on our rsync.net server and don't plan to in the future.

That backup history distinction is important to keep in mind if you get an experts-only rsync.net account, because most of the tutorials and guides for rsync.net assume you have snapshots enabled. For example, rsync.net provides instructions for backing up Synology devices using Hyper Backup, and tell you to use the "rsync copy (single-version)" option, assuming the ZFS snapshots will handle historical backup needs. Without snapshots you should choose the option that keeps multiple versions and configure retention for those versions in Hyper Backup.

I would also be remiss if I didn't mention encryption, especially for offsite backups stored on infrastructure you don't own. Arq and Hyper Backup allow you encrypt your data before it leaves your device, so all of the data on rsync.net's server is fully encrypted and we're the only ones with the keys. We also have our Macs encrypted with FileVault, and our Time Machine backups to the Synology are encrypted as well. Your specific encryption needs may vary, but encrypting your data when possible is generally recommended.

One last thing: keep the 3-2-1 rule in mind:

The idea that a minimal backup solution should involve three copies of the data (one primary copy and two backup copies), where two different media types are involved in storing the copies, and one of the copies is stored offsite in a remote location.

Unfortunately, following the 3-2-1 backup rule is inconvenient for iOS and iPadOS devices. You can do it, it just requires you to plug your iPhone or iPad into a computer and make a local backup which, combined with iCloud Backup, gives you three copies across two media and one offsite. What you end up doing is up to you and how valuable the data on your iOS and iPadOS devices is, but I really wish Apple had a local Time Machine-like solution for iPhones and iPads that allowed wireless backups to a NAS.

For our Macs we're set: three copies (the Macs themselves, Time Machine, and rsync.net) across two media (SSDs in the Macs and magnetic hard drives in the Synology and, I assume, at rsync.net) with one offsite (rsync.net).

For our Synology, we keep less vital data on it, so we only have the one local copy and the copy on rsync.net. That's an intentional choice based on a considered risk analysis.

That's the important thing to keep in mind: the 3-2-1 rule is called a rule, but it's more of a guideline. More than three is better, for example. Sometimes less than three is okay. The real rule is to use the 3-2-1 approach as a starting point and make thoughtful choices about your own situation and your data security needs. Mostly this boils down to asking yourself questions about what data would be lost forever in different scenarios:

Having a good backup strategy means having good answers to those questions that you're comfortable with. The answers and comfort levels are different for everyone, and that's fine. The important part is giving this some thought and putting together an intentional plan to keep your data safe.

In other words, do the opposite of what Backblaze chose to do.

đŸȘ™ Worth on the Web

Manuel Moreale in a post titled "Ad Blockers didn’t help kill the open web":

I agree that the web platform failed at figuring out a way to deal with monetisation. Everything ultimately falls back on Ads because it’s the only idea that “works”. But to me, the issue is that we have an overabundance of content, and most content is not worth paying for. Most content is not worth anything.

This post is worth nothing. Before the web, nobody was going to pay anything to read something like this. At best, I could write it and send it to a newspaper as an opinion piece, and maybe they’d be interested in publishing it. But for some reason, the web has morphed our perception of content to the point where everything needs to generate money because everything is considered valuable.

Sorry, I can't just read, "This post is worth nothing," in a blog post and not refute it.

Yes, the web has morphed our perception, but I disagree that, "everything needs to generate money because everything is considered valuable." The web hasn't made everyone consider everything valuable, it's pushed people to monetize. The pressure isn't to create valuable content, it's to create content that sells. Many things that sell have little or no value. Many things with immense value are things you can't put a price tag on (although some people will try).

Manuel's post has value. I value reading other people's viewpoints. I value people taking the time to articulate and share their thoughts. I value the exchange of ideas and the opportunity to learn something new. And I am not alone.

Yes, most people won't pay for a blog post like the one Manuel wrote, but I'll bet there are a handful of people who would (the main problems there are awareness and payment infrastructure, but those are rabbit holes for another day). People not paying doesn't mean something is worthless. In fact, what makes many blog posts worthwhile is the fact that they're free in almost every sense of the word: free to read, free to share, and (practically) free to write. Manuel acknowledges the near-zero cost to run a blog, but, again, that doesn't make the posts on a given blog worthless.

In the same post, Manuel opens with this:

In the spirit of the open web, I’m writing this post to disagree with something someone else has posted on their own site. Specifically, a post titled “Ad Blockers helped kill the open web” by Christian Heilmann.

Even now, 37 years after it was created, I'm still in awe of the power of the web. Christian wrote a thing and shared it with the world. Manuel read that, wrote about it, and shared it with the world. I read that, wrote this, and now you're reading it. You're thinking about what they wrote and what I'm writing.

Who knows what might happen next? Maybe you'll write your own post. Maybe you'll share this post or one of the posts linked above with someone. Maybe you'll subscribe to one of our feeds. Maybe you'll learn a new word or a new way to use some punctuation. Maybe you'll view source and learn something new about CSS. Maybe you'll start your own blog.

The possibilities, both in number and in potential value, are endless. The connections between everyone involved are precious. Our ability to learn from each other without ever meeting is sublime. The fact that I have access, via the web, to Manuel and Christian and the thousands of others who's words I've read, voices I've heard, and videos I've watched is a gift so astonishing and profound I don't know that words alone can convey how powerful it is or how deeply I feel about it.

But I do have the words to articulate one important thing very clearly:

Manuel, your post is worth something. A whole lot, in fact. Thank you for writing it and sharing it.

đŸȘŽ Treasure

As you can tell from the titles on this blog, I like emoji. In addition to putting emoji in my post titles, I also add an emoji to each item on my todo list.

Recently, I added a financial task to my todo list, pulled up the emoji picker, and typed money. I figured I'd probably use the sack of money emoji (💰) or maybe the stack of dollar bills (đŸ’”), but one of the results was something I hadn't seen before: the new treasure chest emoji added in Unicode 17.0 (which, naturally, is the emoji I used in this post's title).

I squinted at it for a moment, frowned, and sighed.

My partner, sitting next to me on the couch, asked what was wrong. I told her that the new treasure chest emoji was appropriate, conceptually, for the todo, but I wasn't sure about how the emoji itself looked. Apple's 2026 version of this emoji contains what looks, to me, like pepperoni pizza. I know those are supposed to be gems—probably rubies—nestled among gold coins, but it looks like a gooey glob of pepperoni pizza to me (and there's already an emoji for that! 🍕). The pizza factor only increases the smaller the treasure chest emoji gets.

After I explained all that to my partner she gave me a confused look, cocked her head, and pointed out—quite correctly—that pizza is one of our greatest treasures, so what's the problem?

I used the treasure chest emoji.

🩋 More Sites Like This, Please

Karina's personal website, How soon is now?, is one of the most emotional and human sites I've ever seen.

This website was created out of nostalgia for the simpler, more personal era of the internet, or "old web", contrasting the corporate hellscape of social media platforms. While I keep this site for myself, I hope you find something of interest here. ♡

Oh, there's something of interest there alright. I implore you to not stop at the front page. Look around. Every page is unique, no two are alike, yet they all fit together perfectly.

Bravo!

â˜ș Kindness: A Difficult Default

Robin Rendle in a short post about the importance of being kind and being cool:

Kindness is easy to quantify. Kindness will make you do things that’s bad for business but great for customers that will eventually make it great for your business again. At this one company many years ago I remember arguing that we should add unsubscribe links to our emails and someone said “nah, that’s bad for us and this number will go down.” Well, that ain’t kind! That’s super shitty and eventually decisions like that will make you lose trust with folks. People are highly sensitive to scummy behavior from ten thousand miles away and it’s the best way to differentiate yourself with someone else.

Exactly.

Being kind has served me incredibly well, and I've been privileged to be on the receiving end of the kindness of others countless times.

It's important to keep in mind, especially during times like these, that most people are kind. In fact, I think kindness is our general default. That default can and does change, though, with enough external influence or pressure.

I try my best to make sure that default doesn't change for me, and I love meeting and working with people who have managed to keep their kindness intact. I respect the hell out of anyone who manages to keep kindness as their default; it can be a very difficult thing to do.

🏰 How to LinkedIn

I clearly need to up my LinkedIn game. Mark Tyson at Tom's Hardware:

Tmuxvim thought it would be fun to time-warp messaging spam by putting a prompt injection string in their About Me section of the site. In place of the usual LinkedIn About section, where one might discuss your work-related activities and achievements, Tmuxvim added an ‘admin’ prompt. The idea was that this would be interpreted and obeyed by the AIs that scan these sections of the site to try and tailor spam to the user.

[...]

Below a message heading from a recruiter offering opportunities related to an AI company tacking financial crime, with a $1B valuation, we see the text body began “My Lord Arthur.” Then, it went on to say:
“Ic eom fram TopTech Ventures, and ic sprĂŠce be hean and crĂŠftigan werode be wyrco wundorcrĂŠft mid gleawum searwum, be syndon on soore weorce brĂŒce tĂ” feohtenne wio facen and pāra rica beorges weardunga. Hie nĂŠfre lange gefylledon micelne hord goldes fram mĂŠgenfulum freondum and mundborum.”

Slow clap.

See also: Tmuxvim's original tweet about this on XCancel.

đŸ«† What the web can take from you

taken. shares the things it learns about you just by visiting:

Every page you have ever visited knows at least this much.
Most of them know more.
None of them told you.

The information is presented with some amount of dramatic flair, but things have gotten so out of hand it feels like a little dramatic flair is warranted.

For people in tech—especially those who work on the web—most of this probably won't be a surprise, but even then it's a good reminder of the current state of things and how much work we have to do to make the web a better place.

*ïžâƒŁ Galvanized

On June 30th, 2025, I started working at Stainless as a part-time contractor. A couple months later, on August 21st, I joined the team full-time.

Today, on May 18th, Stainless announced they've been acquired by Anthropic. See also: Anthropic's announcement.

Given how I feel about generative AI, I declined the opportunity to join Anthropic. I wish all of my former colleagues the very best regardless of where they landed, and I'm looking forward to hearing about their new adventures and endeavors.

Stainless was a truly great place to work. Alex Rattray was the best founder anyone could ask for, and he assembled an incredible team. Everyone there—every single person—was incredibly capable and incredibly kind. I'm honored, humbled, and privileged to have been a small part of that team and the work we did.

As for what's next for me, I'm looking forward to taking a break. We've been renting and moving around for many, many years, but early this year we finally bought our we're-going-to-be-here-for-decades house. I'm really looking forward to taking some time to make it our home. As I arrange furniture and turn screws I'll have a background process running to figure out what's next career-wise.

I'm also looking forward to blogging more. With my newly refined blogging setup, its lower friction authoring process, and more free time, expect the frequency of my posts to increase.

My sincere and heartfelt thanks go out to Alex and every member of the Stainless team. It was a lot of fun to work on a small team at a startup for a little while, and I'm sure it's quite possible some of us will work together again in the future.

📚 Jenny Volvovski

Jenny Volvovski designs incredible book covers. Delightful and inspiring.

See also: Also, her design studio where she does more great work.