Remotely hosted Images peeve!

[nctnico]

. . .Can't anything be done about the scourge of "remotely hosted Images" on this Forum?

. . .The Forum Threads are full of tens of thousands of images, snapshots of circuits, waveforms, etc., etc., that well–meaning posters intend to illustrate their poster but 95 % of them now say "content no longer viewable in your region" or "upgrade to paid premium" or "the image associated with this thumbnail is no longer available!".

. . .It means posts become useless and impossible to follow by others who would like to help the OP, and the UK Vintage Radio Restoration Forum specifically bans the use of "remotely hosted Images" for this very reason!

The problem is that uploading images and adding them to posts is atrociously difficult and cumbersome. Using an external image hosting service is far less work. And these services typically allow to set a sensible image size (and link to the original, full size image).

You're talking about using this forum's image attachment facilities?
Then you're just plain wrong: it's not difficult at all. And it has been explained in detail, somewhere on this site.

As somebody who tends to create posts with quite a few pictures every now and then, I can tell you the process of adding images to a forum posting is just hard. It is not complicated but it is just way too cumbersome. Therefore I use external image hosting services.

[coromonadalix]

but the problems are that they dont host eternally all the picture(s) you put there ....  and you end up with empty threads on eevblog


putting images on eevblog is not that hard if you follow the rules / sizes  etc ... ?

[EEVblog]

The ones like ZenForo offer the ability to just paste the image into the post.

So how does one get ZenForo?

You don't "get" ZenForo, it is forum software just like Simple Machine software this forum uses.
It is a huge task to change this forum software and we have done polls on this before, no one wants to change it, we are stuck with SMF.

We already have the latest version of this installed:
https://www.smfpacks.com/au/

[EEVblog]

FYI, I can install any mod that is compatible with our forum version

https://custom.simplemachines.org/index.php?action=mods

[golden_labels]

People don’t use external storage, because of how the forum handles attachments. People use it out of habit and nowadays also beause they installed a smartphone app sending images to such services. They take a photo and use that app regardless of what they do, to where they send, and why.⁽¹⁾ So the entire part about how forum works is IMO tangential to the issue.

Somebody earlier mentioned self-hosting. I’ll skip the entire part on how self-hosting is not a solution for most people. Instead let me focus on the much more important problem: not addressing this thread’s topic. Did you people wonder, why you didn’t see me linking anything from my servers? Because if tommorow I die, in a few months the content becomes unavailable and in a few years the domain is under control of spammers. That’s quicker than any image hosting service, even the most questionable one. If I have to face regulators or a troublesome VPS provider, I have much less options to fight back than a big service has. If your country or ISP decides to do something silly or deploy censorship, I’m out of luck. During site moves or restructuring I may forget I’m permanently sharing something. This did already happen to me years ago and so it did many times to other people self-hosting content.

If post integrity and stability of the content are the goal, self-hosting is not solving anything.

⁽¹⁾ To share some scary stories: lawyers sending court document photos and medical personnel sharing photos of patients’ data. In both cases not having any mental model of what’s happening. To the users it was “oh, I always take photos like that and it just appears on friend’s screen.”

[MrMobodies]

I only started to do when a forum update in the past if I remember correctly caused the attached pictures in posts to shift to others across the board but I do attach a copy too.

It takes me more effort doing that, posting it externally and attaching it to post only to find Imgur last year that I had been using since 2018 had blocked it services to the UK over something to do with that Online Safety Bill.

I don't think it has happened again since after many years and considering what happened with Imgur I'll try just using the in post attachment parameter again.

[NiHaoMike]

A hybrid P2P protocol similar to IPFS would be the ideal solution if browsers adopt the standard. (I recall IPFS has too much overhead to make sense for hosting image files, but I haven't looked into the details.) If it's popular, many peers will have a copy of the file. If it's not popular, there's always a copy on the server. To prevent peers from tampering with file contents, hashes are used.

[EEVblog]

I only started to do when a forum update in the past if I remember correctly caused the attached pictures in posts to shift to others across the board but I do attach a copy too.
It takes me more effort doing that, posting it externally and attaching it to post only to find Imgur last year that I had been using since 2018 had blocked it services to the UK over something to do with that Online Safety Bill.
I don't think it has happened again since after many years and considering what happened with Imgur I'll try just using the in post attachment parameter again.

Correct, that was a bug caused by our dual redundant database server configuration.

[golden_labels]

A hybrid P2P protocol similar to IPFS would be the ideal solution if browsers adopt the standard. (…)

For this forum or in general?

To avoid a lenghty post, which replying to the latter demands, I’ll assume the former. Let’s start with a thought experiment. Something much less complicated and more familiar. How many people here would be willing to torrent EEVblog episodes? How stable is that long term, e.g. a year after the episode is no longer of interest to >99% of casual watchers? Where do the answers take us?

The question is not completely hypothetical: Dave uploads to Odysee. It is supposed to be P2P. Out of 115 views on the latest video, I wonder how many run the lbry daemon…

[Jeroen3]

It is completely possible already, perhaps some instructions can be put on the "Post Replay" page?

Code: [Select]

[attachimg=1]

_{These instruction should also mention how to strip exif location data if possible.}

[sparkydonkey]

I only decided to mention this now because of Jeroen talking about EXIF and regarding an earlier user regarding sizes..

for anyone using macs [with or without an AppleID] ImageOptim is a fair free download that would willingly reduce the filesize by varying noticeable percentage (I've noticed many times it was for example able to trim a bit more than 2MB off a JPEG 1600x1000 photo which adds up when it is told to batch 20 of these from one new camera-upload folder before I then afterward cherrypicked several to email-at-a-sane-mailsize out) on top of that it can equally automatically strip EXIF's

[soldar]

but the problems are that they dont host eternally all the picture(s) you put there ....  and you end up with empty threads on eevblog

putting images on eevblog is not that hard if you follow the rules / sizes  etc ... ?

Yeah. I don't know if I am missing something but I have always just attached my graphics directly to my post, here in the forum. I cannot see how there can be anything easier. Maybe I am missing something.

[Jeroen3]

There is also PowerToys Image Resizer for those still rocking a Microsofty.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/image-resizer

It can also remove geolocation tags from the photos.

[BradC]

How many people here would be willing to torrent EEVblog episodes?

I dunno, I'm still seeding torrents that are > 12 years old because they are rare, low bandwidth and don't cost me anything. I don't tend to watch youtube, and as a result either Dave or Fran, but if it came to contributing I reckon I'd be happy to. My current seed list has > 200 torrents which are rarely accessed, but when they are I'm here to help.

[Zero999]

In principle it should be possible to disable the img tag, but that would break a lot of existing posts and yes, some users might not want to upload.

It would be retarded, given I mostly use image tags to refer to attachments stored on the forum.

Forgive me for giving a disgusting example, but as a former lead admin/mod of a big forum I have some stories to share myself. At some point quite a few of these domains are sold to the highest bidder or abandoned. A few years after the image is posted and embedded in a forum thread, I receive PMs from users inquiring about pornographic photos. Many of the illegal kind.

Are you sure it wasn't a troll who stored the images on their server and changed them after they were banned as a form of revenge?

I've heard of spammers doing that; join the forum, post a few vaguely on-topic images stored on their server, then change them to spam later.

[nctnico]

There is also PowerToys Image Resizer for those still rocking a Microsofty.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/image-resizer

It can also remove geolocation tags from the photos.

The solution is much simpler. The img tag allows to set the size of an image inlined in a post.

so [ img width=600 ]-image url here- [ /img ] gets you an image of 600 pixels wide you can open in a new tab where you can get the full size image. Having a full size picture can be helpfull when determining what kind of part is on a board.

[Zero999]

There is also PowerToys Image Resizer for those still rocking a Microsofty.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/image-resizer

It can also remove geolocation tags from the photos.

Check it doesn't do stupid things such as increase the colour depth of all PNGs to 32-bit, otherwise you'll find in many cases, the output image has a larger file size.

The solution is much simpler. The img tag allows to set the size of an image inlined in a post.

so [ img width=600 ]-image url here- [ /img ] gets you an image of 600 pixels wide you can open in a new tab where you can get the full size image. Having a full size picture can be helpfull when determining what kind of part is on a board.

That doesn't save any bandwitdth though.

[golden_labels]

Yeah. I don't know if I am missing something but I have always just attached my graphics directly to my post, here in the forum. I cannot see how there can be anything easier. Maybe I am missing something.

See the first paragraph of my reply above.

How many people here would be willing to torrent EEVblog episodes?

I dunno, I'm still seeding torrents that are > 12 years old because they are rare, low bandwidth and don't cost me anything. I don't tend to watch youtube, and as a result either Dave or Fran, but if it came to contributing I reckon I'd be happy to. My current seed list has > 200 torrents which are rarely accessed, but when they are I'm here to help.

That question was not a call for people, who are exceptions to the general rule, to make themselves visible. There are many people here, who could show how big  their torrent… thing… is. Myself included. But that question was both in a context of a longer statement and rhetorical in nature.

I would be delighted, if we could have independent, privacy-preserving, mesh networking with content hosted by interested parties in a distributed system. But that didn’t happen and is unlikely to ever do. For solid reasons, both societal and technological. Some simplistic proposals are also raising privacy concerns, both actual and legal. So how much I love such ideas, I am trying to reply here taking reality into account. It is a beautiful concept, but not a response to the immediate problem concerning this thread.

Forgive me for giving a disgusting example, but as a former lead admin/mod of a big forum I have some stories to share myself. At some point quite a few of these domains are sold to the highest bidder or abandoned. A few years after the image is posted and embedded in a forum thread, I receive PMs from users inquiring about pornographic photos. Many of the illegal kind.

Are you sure it wasn't a troll who stored the images on their server and changed them after they were banned as a form of revenge?

I've heard of spammers doing that; join the forum, post a few vaguely on-topic images stored on their server, then change them to spam later.

Yes, I am certain. Those were “legitimate” file/image hosting services and the posters were also normal users. Nothing suspicious. Just the circle of life (and death).

[fzabkar]

I guess the same complaint could apply to resources such as manuals and datasheets. I have developed the habit of checking the Wayback Machine for backups. If none exist, I use an official archive.org browser extension to archive that missing URL. That same extension can also check for the earliest and latest versions of that resource.

[aeg]

It is completely possible already, perhaps some instructions can be put on the "Post Replay" page?

Code: [Select]

[attachimg=1] (Attachment Link)

Does that work? I thought we needed to attach the images as end-of-post thumbnails and then edit after posting to add them inline.

[Analog Kid]

It is completely possible already, perhaps some instructions can be put on the "Post Replay" page?

Code: [Select]

[attachimg=1] (Attachment Link)

Does that work? I thought we needed to attach the images as end-of-post thumbnails and then edit after posting to add them inline.

No, you don't.

My preference is actually inline full-size images (judiciously sized!), which can go anywhere in a post.
You only need to add the pic through the "Attachments and other options" link, place the caret where you want the image to appear in the post, then click that choice. The [attachimg=1] tag will appear in your post where the image goes.

BUT: because the SMF software is badly broken, that only works once, the first time.
Every time thereafter you have to load the attachment, then put the tag into the post by hand, being sure to increment the attachment #.

Pain in the ass, but it does work.
This will work for the other attachment options as well.

[Zucca]

The way you attach images here needs work, to be honest.
I know i have been yapping about Xenforo here before, but it's image upload is so easy to use, especially for more throwaway images.

Just snap a picture for example with the snipping tool, and just paste it into the forum. Instant upload and embed. No need to faff around with saving the file locally to attach it. Which of course is still possible anyway.

This, 110% this.

[PlainName]

I know i have been yapping about Xenforo here before, but it's image upload is so easy to use, especially for more throwaway images.

Isn't that a perfect reason for keeping it not so easy?

[Zucca]

FYI, I can install any mod that is compatible with our forum version

https://custom.simplemachines.org/index.php?action=mods

I found nothing that can support natively copy paste image in a reply.
SMF sucks, and it is a pain to use this forum in 2026, compared to others.

Long term we need to switch, I would start the planning and when the stars are aligned jump off the SMF Titanic.

[Ranayna]

I know i have been yapping about Xenforo here before, but it's image upload is so easy to use, especially for more throwaway images.

Isn't that a perfect reason for keeping it not so easy?

Not neccessarily.
For example, if someone has a question about a schematic, it's rarely sensible to attach schematic files.
Why would the poster have to have a saved picture of that schematic though? They have it in their schematic editor.
So snap a quick screenshot and paste it into the forum. Requiring to save the screenshot to be saved as a local file is an unnessecary step, since the file has no additional value to the poster.