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Store arbitrary files with Flickr's new 1TB storage limit
- jtokoph 13y agoIt looks like we'll have a FlickrFS Fuse implementation shortly.
- adamstac 13y agoCouldn't help but plug this on The Changelog: http://thechangelog.com/flickr-store/ http://thechangelog.com/flickr-store/
- logn 13y ago... bonus points for whomever gets an HTTP server running on flickr. Maybe I can store my music there too and stream from a webapp that plays these PNG files. edit: sorry I must be on the wrong message board. Thought this would interest people. Guess I'll take my idea elsewhere.
- supergauntlet 13y agoYou'd probably need a VPS to do that. What you could do is have it pull files based off a database on the server, stick them in a cache, then convert them to what they really are (I assume the utility in the OP just adds a PNG header, so the VPS could just strip that) and then stream it. Maybe you could hack it together with owncloud or something? I'm sorta tempted to try doing something like this but I don't want to screw flickr over.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- MichaelApproved 13y agoThat ruins the service for the rest of us. The phrase "this is why we can't have anything nice" applies perfectly to this post and comment.
- jacquesm 13y agoMaybe we should re-brand the service we're posting this on to 'ConsumerNews' then?
- chippy 13y agoKeepYahooAliveNews
- MichaelApproved 13y agoHacking does not have to equal abusing. I could advocate for fair use of a service and still hack it.
- jacquesm 13y agoWhat's your position on Daeken's hack of the hotel room locks then?
- MichaelApproved 13y agoIIRC, he was responsible about the hole by telling the company first and trying to work with them to get it fixed. He released the info after they were unresponsive. I think that's proper way to handle that. But this thing with Yahoo isn't really the same. One is a security breach while the other is trying to abuse a service. I like hacks and fun experiments. The idea of putting extra content in pictures is interesting but OP was talking about setting up a system around it to put it into wide spread use.
- supergauntlet 13y agoYeah, on the one hand this sort of thing seems like a fun project, but on the other hand it's incredibly exploitive.
- belorn 13y agoWhile I understand what you are saying, it does imply that people should not try to experiment or think of new usages because "it will ruin it for everyone else".
- gfodor 13y agoThis is kind of a dick move to use IMHO. Clearly they are not giving you the space to store arbitrary stuff. It's a neat hack and props to the author but if enough people use this it will not only cause Yahoo! to have to build countermeasures but will also set an ugly precedent for Yahoo! product managers to consider before doing nice things like they did today.
- jacquesm 13y agoThis is hacker news isn't it? Re-purposing things in ways that the original designers did not envision is one of the cornerstones of hacking.
- PavlovsCat 13y agoLike pooping in urinals?
- jacquesm 13y agoImagery aside, no more like building a house in a storage locker.
- PavlovsCat 13y agoa.) flickr is a photo sharing site, no? the UI certainly seems to be optimized for mediocre or even pretty photos, not random noise. If I started pasting huge blocks of mime64 in HN comments to store encrypted personal stuff, or unencrypted cat pictures, would that be in the spirit of hacking, too? Or rather in the spirit of laming? (also notice the fact that I know better than to actually DO this even just ONCE, just to prove a point, because one never knows what random thing might incur a hellban) b.) imagery aside, more like stepping into a storage locker, saying "I could theoretically live here!", everybody having their minds blown, and then not living in the storage locker because that'd be just pointless and awkward. How about this: a tool to put something into series of high-ISO photos via steganography (and allow it to be updated, too) which can't be detected without the correct key.
- spiritplumber 13y agoI remember something similar popping up within days of gmail offering 1GB free :) Good times.
- JoshGlazebrook 13y agoI was wondering just how long it would take for this to pop up...
- grapjas 13y agoDoesn't this already exist? Multiple times? Oh well, obvious 'exploit'. Wondering how Y! will react. They must've forseen this, right?
- supergauntlet 13y agoProbably poorly. Question though, how large of a file can you hide with steganography in a 300mb picture? Would that be big enough to hide an MP3? On a side note, can you upload files to Flickr that have data appended after the end of the image data? Like people were doing on 4chan until moot removed that capability.
- rjbwork 13y agoI have a wee bit of Stego experience as I've written a couple of implementations. Generally for it to be "undetectable", you shouldn't go with more than 25% of an image file, assuming 24-bit color, being data, as it quickly becomes apparent that there is something fishy going on. Your best bet is to create a kind of "keyed stegonagraphy" where you generate a series of keyed nodes, creating a cycle (in the graph theoretic sense) of nodes, each node corresponding to a pixel, and the entire cycle determined entirely deterministically from the key. This is akin to key schedulers used in various cryptography schemes, I suppose. The idea is that you REALLY don't want to just shove your data all at the beginning of the file in order, as it becomes really easy to tease out the data with some cursory frequency analysis/bruteforcing. "Oh the first 20 pixels encode the first X bytes of <insert well known file type here>, BALEETED!" Then you simply have each user pick their own key, stored locally, and have the cycle generated on the fly when encoding and retrieving data.
- nwh 13y agoThey'll probably just ban the API key people use for it.
- ValentineC 13y agoFlickr aside, I am surprised nobody (AFAIK) has come up with a way of sanitizing uploaded image files yet. I wonder if there's a way for GD/ImageMagick to detect the image data and strip everything else. (And if EXIF data is needed for photographs, import all non-binary EXIF data into the system first.)
- nodata 13y agomogrify -strip imagename.jpg But it won't help. You could just make your data a real image.
- jacquesm 13y agoDecompress and subsequent recompress would do this just fine.
- nodata 13y agoWhat would do what fine? mogrify -strip removes what he asks...
- pfortuny 13y agoYou might as well change a single byte. A tiny modification and BANG! nobody notices and the service is pretty useless as a general back-up solution. They could even implement that in their TOS: "whenever you upload a photo you agree to a random byte being modified on one of the pixels on the border."
- shawabawa3 13y agoIt would be pretty easy to stick in some redundancy
- Someone 13y agoMany do, but it isn't always "sanitizing". http://www.iptc.org//site/Home/Media_Releases/IPTC_study_shows_some_social_media_networks_remove_rights_information_from_photos http://www.iptc.org//site/Home/Media_Releases/IPTC_study_sho...: "According to a study by the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC), major social networks like Facebook, Twitter or Flickr remove copyright information and other useful embedded data from pictures posted by their users"