TheBrain 10 released

Posted by 22111
Nov 8, 2018 at 12:15 PM

“I’m a cloud convert (as a Chromebook user), so I don’t have a problem with having my database synced.”

Would you please note that I don’t allege TB-clouded data wasn’t safe, I’m just speaking in general terms here.

Problem 1: the kind of your data (i.e. your “profession”, to put it more bluntly), Problem 2: authority over / possible access to your data (big (e.g.) U.S. competitors, either “directly” or via secret services; these problems are interwoven.

In the E.U., there is now interdiction, for many such (commercial/scientific) data, to have it stored on servers which aren’t located within the E.U. (e.g. in the U.S.). Why? Because the NSA and other authorities have (built up?) a reputation to get access to data, in order to transmit it to U.S. authorities and/or U.S. competitors. I don’t allege this reputation might be justified, I just say that E.U. authorities consider those risks sufficiently important to have made laws to minimize (as they think) those risks.

Thus, E.U. corporations look out for web storage physically located within the E.U., as some of you will know, and will have to do, too, if they are employed in a corporate environment; their mileage in their own pop-and-mom business may vary.

Now the problem with E.U. authorities being that they either aren’t smart enough (except for bothering their own people), or that they leave out important considerations on purpose (U.S. directions?), big and highly-connected U.S. corporations implant such servers within the E.U. so that E.U. corporations store their data with them, within the E.U., and hope there will not be any leaks; let’s knock on wood and share their hopes.

e.g. https://www.rubikon.news/artikel/das-amazon-kartell

And indeed, such hopes may be fully justified for e.g. sociological findings, whilst that may not be entirely and always the case for findings in fields like chemistry for example.

“I experienced for the first time today an inability to sync my main Brain”

Since TB had changed their db format, I had thought they now use some (non-factory-encrypted) standard db, with all info stored in the tables “readable” (including pics, tables, etc.) by any good front-end for that db system? (That’s the case for any (original or meta) info stored in UR, and accessible/processable-by-SQL-with-scripting by any good SQLite front-end.)

This would apply to any stored data, as said, whilst, by additional scripting, you could also replicate any metadata which TB possibly just creates in run-time, be it for ephemeral use only, or your script including storing that meta-data, within the existing tables or in additional tables, to-be-created on purpose.

As has been said above, their patents just (may) concern their graphical representation(s), and filtering and other technical means will prevent that you will have to cope with “endless lists”, the ubiquitous horror of which being expressed almost in any thread in this forum, as well as in the current one.

Thus, IF they don’t scramble their data, in order to make it unavailable to you / your corporation / other developers from external means, it all comes down to the question what metadata you will lose on re-import elsewhere, and that will depend entirely upon the means deployed:

Corporations should hold their data within their own hold-it-all application anyway, instead of spreading it over numerous standard applications, and they are able to script such TB import easily, with correct translation of all record fields into their own logical fields-over-tables distribution, used in their (original or adapted) in-house system, and for pop-and-mom ventures, I suppose that even lazy developers like UR’s will write finally down the necessary import routines (the target db format may be different, as long as the original format is standard and non-scrambled, and of course I’m leaving out web-storage here, whilst corporations’ system often include some web storage nowadays) IF TB goes down (which is quite unlikely within the foreseeable future); the situation is/remains different of course as long as it’s just some disenchanted users who simply (and psychologically) cannot bear TB’s subscription price anymore:

Getting these fine graphics, together with a web-stored db, comes at a price indeed, and which might of course increase further over the years. But don’t say you hadn’t been warned, their pricing always having been premium.