Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit
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Here's a new one:
Android's default photo app advertises at you! Using a notification you, natch, can't disable unless you disable all notifications from the photo app.
Special super bonus hypocrite points: official App page on Play Store does not include "contains ads" warning. Because Google doesn't have to follow their own rules! Fuck you, consumers!
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I don't have the notification, possibly because I've never started that app, but holy ol' fuck look at those permissions:
This app has access to:
Identity
find accounts on the device
add or remove accounts
read your own contact card
Contacts
find accounts on the device
read your contacts
modify your contacts
Location
approximate location (network-based)
precise location (GPS and network-based)
Phone
read phone status and identity
Photos/Media/Files
read the contents of your USB storage
modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
Storage
read the contents of your USB storage
modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
Device ID & call information
read phone status and identity
Other
download files without notification
read subscribed feeds
write subscribed feeds
receive data from Internet
view network connections
pair with Bluetooth devices
change network connectivity
connect and disconnect from Wi-Fi
measure app storage space
full network access
control Near Field Communication
read sync settings
run at startup
set wallpaper
draw over other apps
use accounts on the device
control vibration
prevent device from sleeping
modify system settings
toggle sync on and off
read Google service configurationThat's like, every permission except for BRICK
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Technically a push notification isn't an ad as viewed by their own ad policies (totally talking out of my ass here, of course).
As a consumer, though -- no doubt about it, that there's an ad
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@blakeyrat Yeah, I got that this morning, too.
@blakeyrat said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
unless you disable all notifications from the photo app
But why would it ever need to notify the user of anything? "You just took a picture." "Yeah, I already know that, duh!" I don't see a problem with disabling notifications from it.
Yes, I get your point. It shouldn't be sending you ad notifications; I do my best to avoid all ads. It's annoying, but IMHO as far as annoyances go, it's a pretty small one.
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@julianlam Well don't worry, any second now pie_flavor is gonna come in here and tell us how Android is the best, and Google is the best and you should buy like 500 phones and tablets just to give them more money and OMG it's orgasmic when you get spam notifications everything should be a notification and ads are divine works of art if sent by Google, the best company ever.
Maybe not in those exact words.
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@hardwaregeek said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
But why would it ever need to notify the user of anything? "You just took a picture." "Yeah, I already know that, duh!" I don't see a problem with disabling notifications from it.
OH WELL THEN ADVERTISING AT ME IS PERFECTLY FINE YOU SURE SHOWED ME DIDN'T YOU! IT DOESN'T MATTER AT ALL THAT THIS IS A CLEAR VIOLATION OF TRUST!
Ugh, Android fans are the worst. Go drown yourself.
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@blakeyrat said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@hardwaregeek said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
But why would it ever need to notify the user of anything? "You just took a picture." "Yeah, I already know that, duh!" I don't see a problem with disabling notifications from it.
OH WELL THEN ADVERTISING AT ME IS PERFECTLY FINE YOU SURE SHOWED ME DIDN'T YOU! IT DOESN'T MATTER AT ALL THAT THIS IS A CLEAR VIOLATION OF TRUST!
Ugh, Android fans are the worst. Go drown yourself.
Having a nice rant at your shoulder aliens? I know that's not a response to me, because that's not even remotely similar to what I said. I hate ads. I avoid them as much as reasonably possible, to the extent of using ad blockers, which you have said many times you despise, just about everywhere. I consider
peoplecreatures who work in advertising as perhaps even lower on the evolutionary scale than lawyers, and that's pretty darn low. Advertising at me (or you, or anyone else) is not perfectly fine, IMO.However, one single notification in a year and a half, or so, of my using my Android phone is not, IMO, something worth frothing at the mouth. There are notifications FAR more annoying than that one. Case in point, if you've ever thought of learning a foreign language, DuoLingo is a popular app for that, but based on the kind of things you rant about here, you will utterly HATE it. In-app adds for themselves and random crap, and constant daily notifications and emails telling you what a great job you're doing, and it's time for your daily $language lesson. If you want to learn a new language and brush up your high school $other_language, you'll get these for each of the languages.
No, this doesn't excuse Google pushing stupid ads in default apps. It's obnoxious. But it's a lot less obnoxious, relatively, than what other apps do.
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Should have gone with Samsung. Their gallery app doesn't throw ads at you.
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@hardwaregeek said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
But it's a lot less obnoxious, relatively, than what
other appsWindows 10 do.FTFL
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@timebandit Action Center is worse than useless. Notifications about email I read a week ago hang around forever (until dismissed), but notifications that the computer is going to reboot for updates and there's not a thing you can do to stop it vanish without a trace in 10 seconds.
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@blakeyrat yeah I've been pretty annoyed with that as well, I use Google Photos all the time and that ad has appeared to me as a notification, as a card inside the mobile app, as a card inside the desktop/web app, and maybe even another place. I don't want physical copies of my photos!
I would have just preferred an email. Just email me about the offer and leave it at that.
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@hardwaregeek
See, that's why you shouldn't use open-sour software put together by teenagers in Mom's basement, total lack of QA.
Software should be designed by corporations, with Engineers and QA control personnel.Oh, wait...
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@lb_ Huh. First time I've seen it. Maybe because I don't use Photos all that often. I mean, I use it (rather than some other app) when I want to look at pictures I've taken, but I don't do that very often.
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@blakeyrat said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
Android's default photo app advertises at you!
Well, you don't think Google sunk millions of dollars into making an OS out of the kindness of their hearts, right?
No one wants to pay for software so now everything is ad-supported. Such is life.
Also, both iOS and Windows 10 are also covered in ads for their online services. Windows much more than Android, iOS I don't know because I haven't used it in ages. So it's par for the course.
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@blakeyrat said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
notification you, natch, can't disable unless you disable all notifications from the photo app.
Because you obviously want notifications from the photo app anyway.
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It appears, at least, that blakey's not the only one to notice this.
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I saw this thread coming the second blakey created the "recommend me an Android phone" thread. "Boy, he's going to hate that".
@blakeyrat said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
Android's default photo app advertises at you! Using a notification you, natch, can't disable unless you disable all notifications from the photo app.
It's made by an advertisement company, what did you expect?
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@anonymous234 said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
Also, both iOS and Windows 10 are also covered in ads for their online services. Windows much more than Android, iOS I don't know because I haven't used it in ages. So it's par for the course.
I don't know about online services, but there's no ads anywhere in iOS stock apps. Unless you count the app charts in the AppStore, but that's fair game.
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@topspin they do prompt you quite often to switch to icloud though, according to my my hazy memories from years ago
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@bb36e Switch what to icloud?
Yes, after every upgrade you have to go through the same few "setup" screens where I tell them I don't want anything to do with any kind of cloud. Annoying and redundant, but not comparable.
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@topspin not switch, I think I meant to start using it.But yeah, definitely not on the same level as this
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@bb36e , @topspin Desktop, but Mac OS has these annoying "upgrade to <newest version>" bubbles that only have two options: upgrade now and more information. You can't dismiss them without opening the store and they reappear every day. I can't upgrade because the MacBook is old and janky and it belongs to the school. So that's just as annoying as a one time notification I can swipe away (which I did when it popped up recently).
Not to mention iTunes. Just iTunes. Ugh.
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@blakeyrat said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
Android's default photo app advertises at you! Using a notification you, natch, can't disable unless you disable all notifications from the photo app.
Yeah, that crap came in...around the middle of last year? It was whenever Gallery became Photos and got the Assistant. First time it told me it wanted to make a photo book I could buy I disabled the Assistant and removed its Notifications privilege. (I'd already prevented it from uploading every photo I took or saved to the device to the Google hive mind back in the Google+ days.)
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@parody but then how will you ever be promoted to look at old photos from the same day of the year?
FWIW I've never gotten a push notification to print my photos. Maybe it's not a service offered to Canadians.
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@blakeyrat said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@julianlam Well don't worry, any second now pie_flavor is gonna come in here and tell us how Android is the best, and Google is the best and you should buy like 500 phones and tablets just to give them more money and OMG it's orgasmic when you get spam notifications everything should be a notification and ads are divine works of art if sent by Google, the best company ever.
Maybe not in those exact words.
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@blakeyrat said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
official App page on Play Store does not include "contains ads" warning. Because Google doesn't have to follow their own rules! Fuck you, consumers!
Not quite. Advertising yourself is perfectly normal. Do people want to buy photo books? Probably. Would anybody know about this feature without advertising? Nope. What is the best app to advertise a big sale on a paid feature of an app? That app. The 'contains ads' warning is for apps which just have a space set aside for ads, and tell some advertising company (like Google, ahem ahem) to go hog wild. In that case, it's worth saying because (a) these could be malicious, (b) these could consume data, and (c) these are managed by an ad company and not remotely related to the software you're using. But a !!SINGLE!! ad for photo books, in a photos app, where the photo books are sold by the app's company, through the app, in the form of a notification whose quarter-second action to permanently dismiss seems to cause you enough distress to write a rant for several minutes about it, is a completely different category.
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@anonymous234 said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@blakeyrat said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
Android's default photo app advertises at you!
Well, you don't think Google sunk millions of dollars into making an OS out of the kindness of their hearts, right?
No one wants to pay for software so now everything is ad-supported. Such is life.
Also, both iOS and Windows 10 are also covered in ads for their online services. Windows much more than Android, iOS I don't know because I haven't used it in ages. So it's par for the course.
iOS doesn’t advertise at you. There is the sporadic email about new products and seasonal sales, but I guess you could turn that off (I didn’t, I like checking out their marketing).
I guess that is one of the things you pay the premium for when buying an iPhone: not selling your data to the AdWords program.
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@kt_ said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
selling
that word.... doesn't mean what you think it does...
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@benjamin-hall said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@bb36e , @topspin Desktop, but Mac OS has these annoying "upgrade to <newest version>" bubbles that only have two options: upgrade now and more information. You can't dismiss them without opening the store and they reappear every day. I can't upgrade because the MacBook is old and janky and it belongs to the school. So that's just as annoying as a one time notification I can swipe away (which I did when it popped up recently).
Notifications about new versions of the OS are fair game in my book, unless they turn into pop up screens which install the new version even if you dismiss them by closing.
I understand how this could easily become annoying, though.
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@sloosecannon said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@kt_ said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
selling
that word.... doesn't mean what you think it does...
Huh? Aren’t you? You get the OS for free in exchange for all of the data about you. Isn’t this selling?
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@kt_ said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@sloosecannon said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@kt_ said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
selling
that word.... doesn't mean what you think it does...
Huh? Aren’t you? You get the OS for free in exchange for all of the data about you. Isn’t this selling?
Google doesn't sell your data to AdWords though... which is what you said there.
[1] AdWords is Google, so "selling data" would be silly.
[2] If you mean "selling to AdWords' customers", that's not what you said, and really, they don't sell your data there either, they just display the ads to you...
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@sloosecannon said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@kt_ said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@sloosecannon said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@kt_ said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
selling
that word.... doesn't mean what you think it does...
Huh? Aren’t you? You get the OS for free in exchange for all of the data about you. Isn’t this selling?
Google doesn't sell your data to AdWords though... which is what you said there.
[1] AdWords is Google, so "selling data" would be silly.
[2] If you mean "selling to AdWords' customers", that's not what you said, and really, they don't sell your data there either, they just display the ads to you...I meant that YOU are selling your data to the AdWords program, i.e. Google. Not that Google is selling your data to AdWords.
But whatever, please don’t expect a ic accuracy in what I say, I’m still drunk from the last night. ;)
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@kt_ said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@sloosecannon said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@kt_ said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@sloosecannon said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@kt_ said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
selling
that word.... doesn't mean what you think it does...
Huh? Aren’t you? You get the OS for free in exchange for all of the data about you. Isn’t this selling?
Google doesn't sell your data to AdWords though... which is what you said there.
[1] AdWords is Google, so "selling data" would be silly.
[2] If you mean "selling to AdWords' customers", that's not what you said, and really, they don't sell your data there either, they just display the ads to you...I meant that YOU are selling your data to the AdWords program, i.e. Google. Not that Google is selling your data to AdWords.
But whatever, please don’t expect a ic accuracy in what I say, I’m still drunk from the last night. ;)
I... Hmm. Ok, I see what you're saying now. I entirely misinterpreted what you said there. Woops!
Still though, AdWords isn't really relevant here (except for reasons, in which case go right ahead!), since the ad isn't actually an AdWords ad (do any Google first-party apps have AdWords ads?)
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@sloosecannon said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@kt_ said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@sloosecannon said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@kt_ said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@sloosecannon said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@kt_ said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
selling
that word.... doesn't mean what you think it does...
Huh? Aren’t you? You get the OS for free in exchange for all of the data about you. Isn’t this selling?
Google doesn't sell your data to AdWords though... which is what you said there.
[1] AdWords is Google, so "selling data" would be silly.
[2] If you mean "selling to AdWords' customers", that's not what you said, and really, they don't sell your data there either, they just display the ads to you...I meant that YOU are selling your data to the AdWords program, i.e. Google. Not that Google is selling your data to AdWords.
But whatever, please don’t expect a ic accuracy in what I say, I’m still drunk from the last night. ;)
I... Hmm. Ok, I see what you're saying now. I entirely misinterpreted what you said there. Woops!
Still though, AdWords isn't really relevant here (except for reasons, in which case go right ahead!), since the ad isn't actually an AdWords ad (do any Google first-party apps have AdWords ads?)
You’re right. What I meant was that here it’s google being an advertising company. It sucks, I wouldn’t want to see this kind of ad from a system app. However, Apple does collect data about users for this particular thing as well: they might use it to sell you music, apps or their products, although surely not in this kind of shitty way (they could, but hey!, Steve turn in his grave).
What really allows google to make the OS free is all the data they collect and actually use in their advertising programs, of which AdWords is the biggest, I think.
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@anotherusername said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@blakeyrat said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
notification you, natch, can't disable unless you disable all notifications from the photo app.
Because you obviously want notifications from the photo app anyway.
Google Photos does actually do stuff you'd want to know about, like backing up photos, making automatic panoramas and gifs, and suggesting rotations. So it does have a good use for notifications, albeit this isn't necessarily one of them.
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@dreikin said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
Google Photos does actually do stuff you'd want to
know about, like backing up photos, making automatic panoramas and gifs, and suggesting rotationsdisable, because I don't want it doing any of that stuff automatically.FTFM. Thanks for telling me it's doing that crap, although it looks like most of it is disabled by default.
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@hardwaregeek well it never changes your original images and it's only costing more CPU time for Google, so why disable it? It's not like their machine learning algorithms will stop looking at your photos if you disable it.
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@lb_ said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
well it never changes your original images
No, it doesn't.
Except for "Remove original photos & videos from your device that are already backed up."
Wait, what was that? "Remove original photos ..." Um, no, don't do that.
That said, that setting was already disabled, possibly because there was no backup enabled.
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@hardwaregeek said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@lb_ said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
well it never changes your original images
No, it doesn't.
Except for "Remove original photos & videos from your device that are already backed up."
Wait, what was that? "Remove original photos ..." Um, no, don't do that.
That said, that setting was already disabled, possibly because there was no backup enabled.
You realize that there's no difference between a backup and the "original"?
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@rhywden Except that one is on my device and the other somewhere in the cloud, not under my control, and assuming they don't reencode it to save space (they do it to YT videos; they probably don't do it to backups, but who knows).
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@hardwaregeek said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@rhywden Except that one is on my device and the other somewhere in the cloud, not under my control, and assuming they don't reencode it to save space (they do it to YT videos; they probably don't do it to backups, but who knows).
Then you are a fool because you promptly only have your precious originals on your phone only.
Shall I tell you how many broken/lost/stolen phones I have run across during my past years at school?
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@rhywden said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
you promptly only have your precious originals on your phone only
I have a USB cable, and I know how to use it. (Which I just did; thanks for the reminder.)
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@julianlam said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@parody but then how will you ever be promoted to look at old photos from the same day of the year?
FWIW I've never gotten a push notification to print my photos. Maybe it's not a service offered to Canadians.
I got that notification for the first time ever on black friday. I've never had any other notifications from the photos app that weren't "look at these photos that we automatically created from your screenshots!"
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@hardwaregeek said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@rhywden Except that one is on my device and the other somewhere in the cloud, not under my control, and assuming they don't reencode it to save space (they do it to YT videos; they probably don't do it to backups, but who knows).
They re-encode them to save space if you select the option for free storage, but if your pictures are less than 16MP or you select the "upload full quality" option, they don't re-encode them.
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@ben_lubar said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
They re-encode them ... if ... but if ... they don't ....
Thanks. Useful information.
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@ben_lubar said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@julianlam said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@parody but then how will you ever be promoted to look at old photos from the same day of the year?
FWIW I've never gotten a push notification to print my photos. Maybe it's not a service offered to Canadians.
I got that notification for the first time ever on black friday. I've never had any other notifications from the photos app that weren't "look at these photos that we automatically created from your screenshots!"
Heh, yeah. I wonder when it will create GIFs of my gameplay screenshots...
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@hardwaregeek I didn't realize you were using the Photos app as an image viewer. The whole reason I use Google Photos is for the cloud backup and the "free up space" option that removes the originals from my device.
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@lb_
"Do you want to view this using Photos or Gallery?"
"Whatever; just show me the damned picture."
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@julianlam said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@parody but then how will you ever be promoted to look at old photos from the same day of the year?
While that is a huge loss, Facebook more than makes up for it thanks to a few folks I know who only communicate online using it. :(
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@hardwaregeek said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
@ben_lubar said in Blakeyrat complains about Android, because it's shit:
They re-encode them ... if ... but if ... they don't ....
Thanks. Useful information.
That was the wrong takeaway. That would be:
They DON'T re-encode them unless above 16MP in size for the unlimited file storage option. They still don't re-encode if you let the files count against your storage quota.