TinyPic is shutting down in 2019 - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 20, 2019, 07:55:41 am
content: Over the years, I used TinyPic to store pics that I used to embed in messages (as links) on various forums or other platforms. Mostly technical photos without which many old post will become useless.Any ideas how to save locally the own picstogether with their TinyPic ID/link, so broken links could be eventually replaced with new links of the same pic saved elsewhere?

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 20, 2019, 08:00:41 am
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on August 20, 2019, 07:55:41 amIt's another example why you don't want to use external services for images. Services going down has happened before and will invariably happen again in the future.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 20, 2019, 08:15:15 am
content: There were many reasons to do that:- former elforum.ro (currently elforum.info, the Romanian equivalent of EEVblog) deleted ALL its attachments just to be sure there is no copyrighted material, after somebody attached a copyrighted crossreference datasheet book and the authors threatened to sue Elforum, even thought the copyrighted material was immediately removed.- formatting issues, for example here it was not easy to insert pics inside text. Thankfully, it is now possible on EEVblog to embed pics between text, thanks Dave!- some sites have file size limitations or simply does not allow attachments but allow links, and so onIf it would be to store the file at home for the future, on a static IP address e.g. on a small RaspberryPi or similar, would Clowdflare let my pics pass, given the fact that I don't want to rent a domain name?

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 20, 2019, 10:13:23 am
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on August 20, 2019, 08:15:15 amI doubt they were legally obliged to delete all attachments, which in itself wouldn't guarantee the site isn't violating copyright. Someone might have copied and pasted a significant amount of material into a post.The webmaster was probably scared of future legal action, possibly because they had been very lax on copyrighted material in the past. A more sane approach would be to tell users to delete any material they've posted, report any they find and respond to any future complaints from copyright holders in a timely fashion. If they did all of that, it would be unlikely they would be sued, since they would be performing due diligence.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 20, 2019, 10:34:07 am
content: Indeed, that's how it mainly was, and the reaction from the webmaster side is totally understandable. The webmaster was a private person hosting the server at home, and the forum was administered by volunteer moderators. Nobody want legal harassment for a charitable side project.

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 20, 2019, 12:36:02 pm
content: hmmm ... not sure how many images they're hosting... but here's a thought ... instead of just killing the images, why not reduce just server some very low quality images instead, in order to reduce bandwidth and storage costs (allowing you to reduce the number of servers)ex save anything to 20-30% jpg quality ... anything bigger than 640x480... maybe resize by half.for example the image below is <30KB saved as 20% quality jpeg, from a 500 KB sample imagemaybe add a tiny black bar at the bottom of picture saying Image served at reduced quality. visit tinypic/full/==code== to download at original quality ...Keep the original pictures in the user's account and let user export them to quickly by making a zip or someting...maybe they'd be willing to sanitize their database (remove personal information) and make it available, so anyone could parse their forums for tinypic links and grab the images and upload the images locally and then do a mass replace.Nowadays there's 1gbps unmetered servers for less than 200$ a month... so not sure how much traffic tinypic does to not be able to keep it alive.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 20, 2019, 12:40:44 pm
content: Looks like time for yet another Archiveteam project.https://archiveteam.org/

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 21, 2019, 12:24:56 am
content: It looks like they're still up for now, so if Dave is willing to cooperate by running a query on the forum database to discover all the tinypic embedded images and get a list (since the search itself does not appear to), retrieving them all would not be so hard.Edit: actually, advanced search works and returns a little less than 900 posts containing tinypic links. This won't be hard at all, I'll start saving them now.

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 21, 2019, 12:27:19 am
content: Quote from: amyk on August 21, 2019, 12:24:56 amabout 115 posts:https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&ei=qI9cXf6HB6fIrgT2h7CQCQ&q=tinypic.com+site%3Awww.eevblog.com%2Fforum%2F&oq=tinypic.com+site%3Awww.eevblog.com%2Fforum%2F

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 21, 2019, 12:03:07 pm
content: Quote from: mariush on August 21, 2019, 12:27:19 amGood idea, thank you!As a side note, it's a mystery why are so few results.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2019, 07:01:40 pm
content: Google is not complete, there are far more posts that contain TinyPic images.I've retrieved them all and made a list, see attached.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 28, 2021, 12:32:58 pm
content: Quote from: levismith on April 28, 2021, 11:09:47 amWhen replying to a post, clickAttachments and other options, browse, select the file, click ok and it will appear as an attachement, when posted.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 29, 2021, 12:09:23 am
content: If anyone is still looking for some images they are missing which were previously on TinyPic and in the list attached to the post above, they can PM me.