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There are many systems working on that, one that springs to mind is perkeep (https://perkeep.org/):
- everything is a blob of bytes. perkeep stores everything based on their hash
- a blob of bytes can be a photo, in which case there's a little metadata blob pointing to it, explaining what it is, where it was taken, the modification time, maybe some additional details, and a title. That blob is also stored and retrievable with its hash
- or it can be a video, or a tweet, or a file... in any case that's just an additional metadata blob that creates structure out of the raw bytes
- those metadata blobs are indexed and searchable
The end result is a massive store (possibly implemented with remote storage, it doesn't matter, it's all the same API) with "fragments" in it and a search bar to access it. Search for "Scotland" and you'll see the poem you wrote while you were there, along with your flight ticket and some pictures of the mountains.
I think we've all been using the Downloads or Desktop folder as a user's temp folder, because we knew something we did was recent so it should still be there, and although it's not how it's supposed to be it still works very well that way. But computers are made to serve us, so if that is the way we're using the computer then the software should change to better suit us:
- no software made in 2021 should have a "Save" button: it should be done automatically, such that I can leave the application and reopen it, or open another one that can read the same file, and be back to the state I was in before.
- for some files I just don't care where they are saved, I only want them to be accessible in a "Recent" folder. The only way I've found to make it bearable on windows is to use everything (https://www.voidtools.com).
- for even more files I want to access them not based on some name I put but based on more metadata. We have the tools to automatically categorize photos, I want to be able to search for garden photos without going through a third-party's bloated website.
- some of the files have a specific hierarchy because they depend on each other. A path should be just another metadata instead of being so central to the identity of "something"
All of this is doable with something like perkeep, but its API is not really made for being used as such; it's more geared towards backing up one's digital life and digging through it. Maybe we don't have the right software, but I'm sure we have the right bricks already.
I absolutely agree that we need to move away from the idea of physical folders. The file hierarchy IS very useful way of categorizing your data, but a file should be able to belong to multiple categories. That's why we have hard links, but I digress.
I wrote an emacs package called SFS(search file system) to solve exactly this set of problems. It is just an interface on top of the excellent Recoll full-text indexer. Among other things, SFS allows you to create hierarchies of queries, the search analog of a folder hierarchy. A parent "directory" is just the logical OR of all of it's content named queries. Everything works great for me, but the installation process is a bit painful(especially cross-platform), and indexing can take a serious amount of time and space initially, so I would say it's still a ways from being really comfy to use. But it is totally possible to have your own little google for your file system. I have gifs on the GitHub page to at least give you an idea:
https://github.com/Overdr0ne/sfs
Enjoy
> But on the self-hosting side, docker is making big strides there.
Docker is only part of the puzzle. Even being proficient with Docker (and running services in a traditional way), there was always a big barrier to self-hosting for me in networking. If you lose all of your cloud-equivalent functionality once you leave your home network, it isn't a realistic alternative. I'm not a network whiz and the builtin VPN functionality of my NAS is sadly not up to par either.
In comes Tailscale[0], which made it dirt easy to self-host my stuff and have it available anywhere (given there is a Tailscale client for it which has been the case for all my devices). Since I started using it, I've completely migrated my contacts, calendar, zettelkasten (Trilium) to self-hosting and started some home automation projects. For someone who tried and was stuck at the networking part in the past, it truly is a game changer (and I'd like to think I'm not the only one that is held back by that).
[0] https://tailscale.com/
I mount a cloud drive containing about 3 TB data on my laptop using rclone and it works great. And the cloud provider does not even have a native Linux client. I am so happy with rclone and will totally recommend it.
https://github.com/rclone/rclone
The fact that a common operational mode is unfathomable to you does not make it useless to others.
The topic comes up regularly in HN posts and comments.
I've taken my own stab at it: tabs are a preferable, readily-utilised, if cumbersome, form of state management that's otherwise lacking from web browsers.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17376317
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9638702
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/256lxu/tabbed_...